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THE LAST HOPE 





THE LAST HOPE 

12 


BY 

HENRY SETON MERRIMAN 


AUTHOR OF 

“tomaso’s FORTUNE AND OTHER STORIES,” “BARLASCH OF THE 
GUARD,” “THE VULTURES,” “THE SOWERS,” ETC. 



ILLUSTRATED BY A. FORESTIER 




CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 
NEW YORK - 1904 


LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Gooies Received 

APR 27 1904 

Cepyrleht Entry 
7 . 7 — {£\t> 

CLASS XXo. No. 

X S 0 th r 

COPY A 


u 

V&f 


Copyright, 1904 , by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 



TROW DIRECTORY 

PRINTING AND BOOKBINOINO COMPANY 
NEW YORK 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

I. Le Roi est Mort 1 

II. Vive le Roi . . 12 

III. The Return of the “Last Hope” . 23 

IV. The Marquis’s Creed .... 34 

V. On the Dyke 46 

VI. The Story of the Castaways . . 58 

VII. On the Scent 70 

VIII. The Little Boy who was a King . 81 

IX. A Mistake 93 

X. In the Italian House .... 105 

XI. A Beginning .... . . .115 

XII. The Secret of Gemosac .... 126 

XIII. Within the Gates 137 

XIV. The Lifted Veil 148 

XV. The Turn of the Tide . . . . 159 

XVI. The Gamblers 169 

XVII. On the Pont Royal 180 

XVIII. The City that Soon Forgets . .192 

XIX. In the Breach 203 

XX. “Nineteen” 213 

XXI. No. 8 Ruelle St. Jacob . . .224 


v 


CONTENTS 


PAGI 

XXII. Dropping the Pilot .... 236 

XXIII. A Simple Banker 248 

XXIV. The Lane of Many Turnings . 257 

XXV. Sans Rancune 267 < 

XXVI. Returned Empty 279 

XXVII. Out of the Mouths of Babes . 289 

XXVIII. Barebone’s Price * 300 

XXIX. In the Dark 311 

XXX. In the Furrow Again . . . 323 

XXXI. The Thursday of Madame de Chan- 

tonnay 334 

XXXII. Primroses 344 

XXXIII. Dormer Colville is Blind . . 356 

XXXIV. A Sordid Matter . . . . . 368 

XXXV. A Square Man 378 

XXXVI. Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence does 

not Understand .... 389 

XXXVII. An Understanding .... 400 

XXXVIII. A Coup-d’£tat 411 

XXXIX. “John Darby” 423 

XL. Farlingford once More . . . 433 


vi 


THE LAST HOPE 





THE LAST HOPE 


CHAPTER I 

LE ROI EST MORT 

“There; that’s it. That’s where they buried 
Frenchman,” said Andrew — known as River An- 
drew. For there was another Andrew who earned 
his living on the sea. 

River Andrew had conducted the two gentlemen 
from “The Black Sailor” to the churchyard by 
their own request. A message had been sent to him 
in the morning that this service would be required 
of him, to which he had returned the answer that 
they would have to wait until the evening. It was 
his day to go round Marshford way with dried fish, 
he said ; but in the evening they could see the church 
if they still set their minds on it. 

River Andrew combined the light duties of grave- 
digger and clerk to the parish of Farlingford in 
Suffolk with a small but steady business in fish of his 
own drying, nets of his own netting, and pork slain 
and dressed by his own weather-beaten hands. 

1 


THE LAST HOPE 

For Farlingford lies in that part of England 
which reaches seaward toward the Fatherland, and 
seems to have acquired from that proximity an in- 
satiable appetite for; sausages and pork. On these 
coasts the killing of pigs and the manufacture of 
sausages would appear to employ the leisure of the 
few, who for one reason or another have been deemed 
unfit for the sea. It is not our business to inquire 
why River Andrew had never used the fickle element. 
All that lay in the past. And -^n a degree he was 
saved from the. disgrace, of being a landsman by the 
smell of tar . and bloaters that heralded his. coming, 
by the blue jersey and the brown homespun trousers 
which he wore all the week, and by the saving word 
which distinguished him from the poor inland lub- 
bers who had no dealings with water at all. 

He had this evening laid aside his old sou’wester 
— worn in fair and foul weather alike — for his Sun- 
day hat. His head-part was therefore official and 
lent additional value to the words recorded. He 
spoke, them, moreover, with a dim note of aggressive- 
ness. which might only have been racy of a soil breed- 
ing men who are curt and clear of speech. But there 
was more than an East- Anglian bluffness in the state- 
ment and the manner of its delivery, as his next 
observation at once explained. 

“Passen thinks it’s over there by the yew-tree — 
but he’s wrong. That there one was a wash-up found 
2 


LE KOI EST MQRT 

by old Willem the lighthouse keeper one morning 
early. No! this is where Frenchman was laid by.” 

He indicated with the toe of his sea-boot a crum- 
bling grave which had never been distinguished by 
a headstone. The grass grew high all over Farling- 
ford churchyard, almost hiding the mounds where 
the forefathers slept side by side with the nameless 
“wash-ups,” to whom they had extended a last hos- 
pitality. 

Kiver Andrew had addressed his few remarks to 
the younger of his two companions, a well-dressed, 
smartly set-up man of forty or thereabouts, who 
in turn translated the gist of them into French for 
the information of his senior, a little white-haired 
gentleman whom he called “Monsieur le Marquis.” 

He spoke glibly enough in either tongue, with a 
certain indifference of manner. This was essen- 
tially a man of cities, and one better suited to the 
pavement than the rural quiet of Farlingford. To 
have the gift of tongues is no great recommenda- 
tion to the British-born, and Kiver Andrew looked 
askance at this fine gentleman while he spoke 
French. He had received letters at the post-office 
under the name of Dormer Colville: a name not 
unknown in London and Paris, but o£ which the 
social fame had failed to travel even to Ipswich, 
twenty miles away from this mouldering church- 
yard. 


3 


THE LAST HOPE 


“It’s getting on for twenty-five years come Mich- 
aelmas,” put in River Andrew. “I wasn’t digger 
then; but I remember the burial well enough. And 
I remember Frenchman — same as if I see him yes- 
terday.” 

He plucked a blade of grass from the grave and 
placed it between his teeth. 

“He were a mystery, he were,” he added, darkly, 
and turned to look musingly across the marshes 
toward the distant sea. For River Andrew, like 
many hawkers of cheap wares, knew the indirect 
commercial value of news. 

The little white-haired Frenchman made a gest- 
ure of the shoulders and outspread hands indicative 
of a pious horror at the condition of this neglected 
grave. The meaning of his attitude was so obvious 
that River Andrew shifted uneasily from one foot to 
the other. 

“Passen,” he said, “he don’t take no account of 
the graves. He’s what you might call a bookworm. 
Always a sitting indoors reading books and pictures. 
Butcher Franks turns his sheep in from time to time. 
But along of these tempests and the hot sun the grass 
has shot up a bit. Frenchman’s no worse off than 
others. And there’s some as are fallen in altogether.” 

He indicated one or two graves where the mound 
had sunk, and suggestive hollows were visible in the 
grass. 


4 


LE ROI EST MORT 


“First, it’s the coffin that bu’sts in beneath the 
weight, then it’s the bones,” he added, with that 
grim realism which is begotten of familiarity. 

Dormer Colville did not trouble to translate these 
general truths. He suppressed a yawn as he con- 
templated the tottering headstones of certain master- 
mariners and Trinity-pilots taking their long rest in 
the immediate vicinity. The churchyard lay on the 
slope of rising ground upon which the village of 
Farlingford straggled upward in one long street. 
Farlingford had once been a town of some commer- 
cial prosperity. Its story was the story of half a 
dozen ports on this coast — a harbour silted up, a com- 
merce absorbed by a more prosperous neighbour 
nearer to the railway. 

Below the churchyard was the wide street which 
took a turn eastward at the gates and led straight 
down to the river-side. Farlingford Quay — a little 
colony of warehouses and tarred huts — was separated 
from Farlingford proper by a green, where the water 
glistened at high tide. In olden days the Freemen 
of Farlingford had been privileged to graze their 
horses on the green. In these later times the lord 
of the manor pretended to certain rights over the 
pasturage, which Farlingford, like one man, denied 
him. 

“A mystery,” repeated River Andrew, waiting 
very clearly for Mr. Dormer Colville to translate 

5 


THE LAST HOPE 


the suggestive word to the French gentleman. But 
Colville only yawned. “And there’s few in Farling- 
ford as knew Frenchman as well as I did.” 

Mr. Colville walked toward the church porch, 
w-hich seemed to appeal to his sense of the artistic; 
for he studied the Norman work with the eye of a 
connoisseur. He was evidently a cultured man, 
more interested in a work of art than in human story. 

River Andrew, seeing him depart, jingled the keys 
which he carried in his hand, and glanced impatiently 
toward the older man. The Marquis de Gemosac, 
however, ignored the sound as completely as he had 
ignored River Andrew’s remarks. He was looking 
round him with eyes which had once been dark and 
bright, and were now dimly yellow. He looked from 
tomb to tomb, vainly seeking one that should be dis- 
tinguished, if only by the evidence of a little care 
at the hands of the living. He looked down the wide 
grass-grown street — partly paved after the manner 
of the Netherlands — toward the quay, where the 
brown river gleamed between the walls of the 
weather-beaten brick buildings. There was a ship 
lying at the wharf, half laden with hay; a coasting 
craft from some of the greater tidal rivers, the Or- 
well or the Blackwater. A man was sitting on a piece 
of timber on the quay, smoking as he looked sea- 
ward. But there was no one else in sight. For Far- 
lingford was half depopulated, and it was tea-time. 

G 


LE ROI EST MORT 

Across the river lay the marshes, unbroken by tree 
or hedge, barren of even so much as a hut. In the 
distance, hazy and gray in the eye of the North Sea, 
a lighthouse stood dimly, like a pillar of smoke. To 
the south — so far as the eye could pierce the sea- 
haze — marshes. To the north — where the river ran 
between bare dykes — marshes. 

And withal a silence which was only intensified 
by the steady hum of the wind through the gnarled 
branches of the few churchyard trees which turn a 
crouching back toward the ocean. 

In all the world — save, perhaps, in the Arctic 
world — it would be hard to find a picture emphasis- 
ing more clearly the fact that a man’s life is but a 
small matter, and the memory of it like the seed of 
grass upon the wind to be blown away and no more 
recalled. 

The bearer of one of the great names of France 
stood knee-deep in the sun-tanned grass and looked 
slowly round as if seeking to imprint the scene upon 
his memory. He turned to glance at the crumbling 
church behind him, built long ago by men speaking 
the language in which his own thoughts found shape. 
He looked slowly from end to end of the ill-kept 
burial ground, crowded with the bones of the name- 
less and insignificant dead, who, after a life passed 
in the daily struggle to wrest a sufficiency of food 
from a barren soil, or the greater struggle to hold 
7 


THE LAST HOPE 


their own against a greedy sea, had faded from the 
memory of the living, leaving naught behind them 
but a little mound where the butcher put his sheep 
to graze. 

Monsieur de Gemosac was so absorbed in his re- 
flections that he seemed to forget his surroundings 
and stood above the grave, pointed out to him by 
River Andrew, oblivious to the cold wind that blew 
in from the sea, deaf to the clink of the sexton’s in- 
viting keys, forgetful of his companion who stood 
patiently waiting within the porch. The Marquis de 
Gemosac was a little bent man, spare of limb, heavy of 
shoulder, with snow-white hair against which his skin, 
brown and wrinkled as a walnut shell, looked sallow 
like old ivory. His face was small and aquiline ; not 
the face of a clever man, but clearly the face of an 
aristocrat. He had the grand manner too, and that 
quiet air of self-absorption which usually envelops 
the bearers of historic names. 

Dormer Colville watched him with a good-natured 
patience which pointed, as clearly as his attitude 
and yawning indifference, to the fact that he was not 
at Earlingford for his own amusement. 

Presently he lounged back again toward the 
Marquis and stood behind him. 

“The wind is cold, Marquis,” he said, pleasantly. 
“One of the coldest spots in England. What would 
Mademoiselle say if I allowed you to take a chill V 9 
8 


LE ROI EST MORT 

De Gemosac turned and looked at him over his 
shoulder with a smile full of pathetic meaning. He 
spread out his arms in a gesture indicative of hor- 
ror at the bleakness of the surroundings; at the 
mournfulness of the decaying village; the dreary 
hopelessness of the mouldering church and tombs. 

“I was thinking, my friend,” he said. “That was 
all. It is not surprising . . . that one should think.” 

Colville heaved a sigh and said nothing. He was, 
it seemed, essentially a sympathetic man; not of a 
thoughtful habit himself, but tolerant of thought in 
others. It was abominably windy and cold, although 
the corn was beginning to ripen ; but he did not com- 
plain. Neither did he desire to hurry his com- 
panion in any way. 

He looked at the crumbling grave with a passing 
shadow in his clever and worldly eyes, and composed 
himself to await his friend’s pleasure. 

In his way he must have been a philosopher. His 
attitude did not suggest that he was bored, and yet 
it was obvious that he was eminently out of place in 
this remote spot. He had nothing in common, for 
instance, with River Andrew, and politely yawned 
that reminiscent fish-curer into silence. His very 
clothes were of a cut and fashion never before seen 
in Farlingford. He wore them, too, with an air 
rarely assumed even in the streets of Ipswich. 

Men still dressed with care at this time; for 
9 


THE LAST HOPE 


cPOrsay was not yet dead, though his fame was 
tarnished. Mr. Dormer Colville was not a dandy, 
however. He was too clever to go to that extreme 
and too wise not to be within reach of it in an age 
when great tailors were great men, and it was quite 
easy to make a reputation by clothes alone. 

Hot only was his dress too fine for Farlingford, 
but his personality was not in tune with this forgot- 
ten end of England. His movements were too quick 
for a slow-moving race of men; no fools, and wiser 
than their midland brethren ; slow because they had 
yet to make sure that a better way of life had been 
discovered than that way in which their Saxon fore- 
fathers had always walked. 

Colville seemed to look at the world with an 
exploiting eye. He had a speculative mind. Had 
he lived at the end of the Victorian era instead of 
the beginning he might have been a notable finan- 
cier. His quick glance took in all F arlingford in one 
comprehensive verdict. There was nothing to be 
made of it. It was uninteresting because it obviously 
had no future, nor encouraged any enterprise. He 
looked across the marshes indifferently, following 
the line of the river as it made its devious way be- 
tween high dykes to the sea. And suddenly his eye 
lighted. There was a sail to the south. A schooner 
was standing in to the river mouth, her sails glowing 
rosily in the last of the sunset light, 

10 


LE ROI EST MORT 

Colville turned to see whether River Andrew had 
noticed, and saw that landsman looking skyward with 
an eye that seemed to foretell the early demise of a 
favouring wind. 

“That’s The Last Hope,’ ” he said, in answer to 
Dormer Colville’s question. “And it will take all 
Seth Clubbe’s seamanship to save the tide. The 
Last Hope.’ There’s many a ‘Hope’ built at Far- 
lingford, and that’s the last, for the yard is closed 
and there’s no more building now.” 

The Marquis de Gemosac had turned away from 
the grave, but as Colville approached him he looked 
back to it with a shake of the head. 

“After eight centuries of splendour, my friend,” 
he said. “Can that be the end — that?” 

“It is not the end,” answered Colville, cheerfully. 
“It is only the end of a chapter. Le roi est mort — 
vive le roi!” 

He pointed with his stick, as he spoke, to the 
schooner creeping in between the dykes. 


11 


CHAPTER II 


VIVE LE KOI 

“The Last Hope” had been expected for some 
days. It was known in Earlingford that she was 
foul, and that Captain Clubbe had decided to put her 
on the slip-way at the end of the next voyage. Cap- 
tain Clubbe was a Farlingford man. “The Last 
Hope” was a Farlingford built ship, and Seth Clubbe 
was not the captain to go past his own port for the 
sake of saving a few pounds. 

“Earlingford’s his nation,” they said of him down 
at the quay. “Born and bred here, man and boy. 
He’s not likely to put her into a Thames dry-dock 
while the slip-way’s standing empty.” 

All the village gossips naturally connected the ar- 
rival of the two gentlemen from London with the 
expected return of “The Last Hope.” Captain 
Clubbe was known to have commercial relations with 
France. It was currently reported that he could 
speak the language. No one could tell the number 
of his voyages backward and forward from the Bay 
to Bristol, to Yarmouth, and even to Bergen, carry- 
12 


VIVE LE KOI 


ing salt-fish to those countries where their religion 
bids them eat that which they cannot supply from 
their own waters, and bringing back wine from Bor- 
deaux and brandy from Charente. 

It is not etiquette, however, on these wind-swept 
coasts to inquire too closely into a man’s business, 
and, as in other places, the talk was mostly among 
those who knew the least — namely, the women. There 
had been a question of repairing the church. The 
generation now slowly finding its way to its pre- 
cincts had discussed the matter since their childhood 
and nothing had come of it. 

One bold spirit put forth the suggestion that the 
two gentlemen were London architects sent down 
by the Queen to see to the church. But the idea fell 
to the ground before the assurance from Mrs. Clop- 
ton’s own lips that the old gentleman was nothing 
but a Frenchman. 

Mrs. Clopton kept “The Black Sailor” and knew a 
deal more than she was ready to tell people; which 
is tantamount to saying that she was a woman in a 
thousand. It had leaked out, however, that the 
spokesman of the party, Mr. Dormer Colville, had 
asked Mrs. Clopton whether it was true that there 
was claret in the cellars of “The Black Sailor.” And 
anyone having doubts could satisfy himself with a 
sight of the empty bottles, all mouldy, standing in 
the back yard of the inn. 

13 


THE LAST HOPE 


They were wine-merchants from France, con- 
cluded the wiseacres of Farlingford over their even- 
ing beer. They had come to Farlingford to see 
Captain Clubbe. What could be more natural ! For 
Farlingford was proud of Captain Clubbe. It so 
often happens that a man going out into the world 
and making a great name there, forgets his birth- 
place and the rightful claim to a gleam of reflected 
glory which the relations of a great man — who have 
themselves stayed at home and done nothing — are 
always ready to consider their due reward for having 
shaken their heads over him during the earlier 
struggles. 

Though slow of tongue, the men of Farlingford 
were of hospitable inclination. They were sorry for 
Frenchmen, as for a race destined to smart for all 
time under the recollection of many disastrous de- 
feats at sea. And of course they could not help being 
ridiculous. Heaven had made them like that while 
depriving them of any hope of ever attaining to good 
seamanship. Here was a foreigner, however, cast up 
in their midst, not by the usual channel indeed, but 
by a carriage and pair from Ipswich. He must feel 
lonesome, they thought, and strange. They, there- 
fore, made an effort to set him at his ease, and when 
they met him in “the street” jerked their heads at 
him sideways. The upward jerk is less friendly and 
usually denotes the desire to keep strictly within the 
14 


VIVE LE ROI 


limits- of. acquaintanceship. To Mr. Dormer Col- 
ville they gave the upward lift of the chin as to a 
person too facile in speech to be desirable. 

The dumbness of the Marquis de Gemosac ap- 
pealed perhaps to a race of seafaring men very spar- 
ing provided by nature with words in which to 
clothe thoughts no less solid and sensible by reason 
of their terseness. It was at all events unanimously 
decided that everything should be done to make the 
foreigner welcome until the arrival of “The Last 
Hope.” A similar unanimity characterised the de- 
cision that he must without delay be shown E rench- 
man’s grave. 

River Andrew’s action and the unprecedented 
display of his Sunday hat on a week-day were noth- 
ing but the outcome of a deep-laid scheme. Mrs. 
Clopton had been instructed to recommend the gen- 
tlemen to inspect the church, and the rest had been 
left to the wit of River Andrew, a man whose calling 
took him far and wide, and gave him opportunities 
of speech with gentlefolk. 

These opportunities tempted River Andrew to go 
beyond his instructions so far as to hint that he could, 
if encouraged, make disclosures of interest respect- 
ing Frenchman. Which was untrue ; for River An- 
drew knew no more than the rest of Farlingford of 
a man who, having been literally cast up by the sea 
at their gates, had lived his life within those gates, 
15 


THE LAST HOPE 


had married a Farlingford woman, and had at last 
gone the way of all Farlingford without telling any 
who or what he was. 

From sundry open cottage doors and well-laden 
tea-tables glances of inquiry were directed toward 
the strangers’ faces as they walked down the street 
after having viewed the church. Some prescient 
females went so far as to state that they could see 
quite distinctly in the elder gentleman’s demeanour 
a sense of comfort and consolation at the knowledge 
thus tactfully conveyed to him that he was not the 
first of his kind to be seen in Farlingford. 

Hard upon the heels of the visitors followed River 
Andrew, wearing his sou’wester now and carrying 
the news that “The Last Hope” was coming up on 
the top of the tide. 

Farlingford lies four miles from the mouth of the 
river, and no ship can well arrive unexpected at the 
quay; for the whole village may see her tacking up 
under shortened sail, heading all ways, sometimes 
close-hauled, and now running free as she follows the 
zigzags of the river. 

Thus, from the open door, the villagers calculated 
the chances of being able to finish the evening meal 
at leisure and still be down at the Quay in time to 
see Seth Clubbe bring his ship alongside. One by 
one the men of Farlingford, pipe in mouth, went 
toward the river, not forgetting the kindly, sideward 
16 


YIYE LE KOI 

jerk of the head for the old Erenchman already wait- 
ing there. 

It was nearly the top of the tide and the clear green 
water swelled and gurgled round the weedy piles of 
the quay, bringing on its surface tokens from the 
sea — shadowy jelly-fish, weed, and froth. “The Last 
Hope” was quite close at hand now, swinging up in 
mid-stream. The sun had set and over the marshes 
the quiet of evening brooded hazily. Captain Clubbe 
had taken in all sail except a jib. His anchor was 
swinging lazily overside, ready to drop. The watch- 
ers on the Quay could note the gentle rise and fall 
of the crack little vessel as the tide lifted her from 
behind. She seemed to be dancing to her home like 
a maiden back from school. The swing of her taper- 
ing masts spoke of the heaving seas she had left be- 
hind. 

It was characteristic of Farlingford that no one 
spoke. River Andrew was already in his boat, ready 
to lend a hand should Captain Clubbe wish to send a 
rope ashore. But it was obvious that the captain 
meant to anchor in the stream for the night: so ob- 
vious that if anyone on shore had mentioned the 
conclusion his speech would have called for nothing 
but a contemptuous glance from the steady blue eyes 
all round him. 

It was equally characteristic of a Farlingford 
ship that there were no greetings from the deck. 
IT 


THE LAST HOPE 


Those on shore could clearly perceive the burly form 
of Captain Clubbe, standing by the weather rigging. 
Wives could distinguish their husbands, and girls 
their lovers; but, as these were attending to their 
business with a taciturn concentration, no hand was 
raised in salutation. 

The wind had dropped now. For these are coasts 
of quiet nights and boisterous days. The tide was 
almost slack. “The Last Hope” was scarcely mov- 
ing, and in the shadowy light looked like a phantom 
ship sailing out of a dreamy sunset sky. 

Suddenly the silence was broken, so unexpectedly, 
so dramatically, that the old Frenchman, to whose 
nature such effects would naturally appeal with a 
lightning speed, rose to his feet and stood looking 
with startled eyes toward the ship. A clear strong 
voice had broken joyously into song, and the words 
it sang were French : 

“ C’est le Hasard, 

Qui, tot ou tard, 

Ici bas nous seconde ; 

Car, 

D’un bout du monde 
A 1’autre bout, 

Le Hasard seul fait tout.” 

Not only were the words incongruous with their 
quaint, sadly gay air of a dead epoch of music and 
poetry ; but the voice was in startling contrast to the 
18 


VIVE LE KOI 


tones of a gruff and slow-speaking people. For it 
was a clear tenor voice with a ring of emotion in it, 
half laughter, half tears, such as no Briton could 
compass himself, or hear in another without a dumb 
feeling of shame and shyness. 

But those who heard it on the shore — and all 
Farlingford was there by this time — only laughed 
curtly. Some of the women exchanged a glance and 
made imperfectly developed gestures, as of a toler- 
ance understood between mothers for anything that 
is young and inconsequent. 

“We’ve gotten Loo Barebone back at any rate,” 
said a man, bearing the reputation of a wit. And 
after a long pause one or two appreciators answered : 

“You’re right,” and laughed good-humouredly. 

The Marquis de Gemosac sat down again, with a 
certain effort at self-control, on the balk of timber 
which had been used by some generations of tide- 
watchers. He turned and exchanged a glance with 
Dormer Colville, who stood at his side leaning on his 
gold-headed cane. Colville’s expression seemed to 
say: 

“I told you what it would be. But wait: there is 
more to come.” 

His affable eyes made a round of the watching 
faces, and even exchanged a sympathetic smile with 
some, as if to hint that his clothes were only fine 
because he belonged to a fine generation, but that 
19 


THE LAST HOPE 

his heart was as human as any beating under a 
homelier coat. 

“There’s Passen,” said one woman to another, 
behind the corner of her apron, within Colville’s 
hearing. “It takes a deal to bring him out o’ doors 
nowadays, and little Sep and — Miss Miriam. 

Dormer Colville heard the words. And he heard 
something unspoken in the pause before the mention 
of the last name. He did not look at once in the 
direction indicated by a jerk of the speaker’s thumb, 
but waited until a change of position enabled him to 
turn his head without undue curiosity. He threw 
back his shoulders and stretched his legs after the 
manner of one cramped by standing too long in one 
attitude. 

A hundred yards farther up the river, where the 
dyke was wider, a gray-haired man was walking 
slowly toward the quay. In front of him a boy of 
ten years was endeavouring to drag a young girl 
toward the jetty at a quicker pace than she desired. 
She was laughing at his impetuosity and looking 
back toward the man who followed them with the 
abstraction and indifference of a student. 

Colville took in the whole picture in one quick 
comprehensive glance. But he turned again as the 
singer on board “The Last Hope” began another 
verse. The words were clearly audible to such 
as knew the language; and Colville noted that 
20 


VIVE LE ROI 

the girl turned with a sudden gravity to listen to 
them. 


“ Un tel qu’on vantait 
Par hasard etait 
D’origine assez mince ; 

Par hasard il plut, 

Par hasard il fut 

Baron, ministre, et prince. 99 

Captain Clubbe’s harsh voice broke into the song 
with the order to let go the anchor. As the ship 
swung to the tide the steersman, who wore neither 
coat nor waistcoat, could be seen idly handling the 
wheel still, though his duties were necessarily at an 
end. He was a young man, and a gay salutation of 
his unemployed hand toward the assembled people — 
as if he were sure that they were all friends — 
stamped him as the light-hearted singer, so different 
from the Earlingford men, so strongly contrasted to 
his hearers, who nevertheless jerked their heads side- 
ways in response. He had, it seemed, rightly gauged 
the feelings of these cold East-Anglians. They were 
his friends. 

River Andrew’s boat was alongside a The Last 
Hope” now. Someone had thrown him a rope, which 
he had passed under his bow thwart and now held 
with one hand, while with the other he kept his dis- 
tance from the tarry side of the ship. There was a 
pause until the schooner felt her moorings, then 
21 


THE LAST HOPE 


Captain Clubbe looked over the side and nodded a 
curt salutation to River Andrew, bidding him, by 
the same gesture, wait a minute until he had donned 
his shore-going jacket. The steersman was pulling 
on his coat while he sought among the crowd the faces 
of his more familiar friends. He was, it seemed, 
a privileged person, and took it for granted that he 
should go ashore with the captain. He was, per- 
haps, .one of those who seemed to be privileged at 
their birth by Fate, and pass through life on the 
sunny side with a light step and laughing lips. 

Captain Clubbe was the first to step ashore, with 
one comprehensive nod of the Lead for all Farling- 
ford. Close on his heels the younger sailor was al- 
ready returning the greetings of his friends. 

“Hullo, Loo !” they said ; or, “How do, Barebone ?” 
For their tongues are no quicker than their limbs, 
and to this day, “How do ?” is the usual greeting. 

The Marquis de Gemosac, who was sitting in the 
background, gave a sharp little exclamation of sur- 
prise when Barebone stepped ashore, and turned to 
Dormer Colville to say in an undertone : 

“Ah — but you need say nothing.” 

“I promised you,” answered Colville, carelessly, 
“that I should tell you nothing till you had seen 
him.” 


22 


CHAPTER III 


THE RETURN OF “THE LAST HOPE” 

Hot only France, but all Europe, had at this time 
to reckon with one who, if, as his enemies said, was 
no Bonaparte, was a very plausible imitation of one. 

In 1849 France, indeed, was kind enough to give 
the world a breathing space. She had herself just 
come through one of those seething years from which 
she alone seems to have the power of complete recov- 
ery. Paris had been in a state of siege for four 
months; not threatened by a foreign foe, but torn to 
pieces by internal dissension. Sixteen thousand had 
been killed and wounded in the streets. A ministry 
had fallen. A ministry always does fall in France. 
Bad weather may bring about such a descent at any 
moment. A monarchy had been thrown down — a 
king had fled. Another king; and one who should 
have known better than to put his trust in a people. 

Half a dozen generals had attempted to restore 
order in Paris and confidence in France. Then, at 
the very end of 1848, the fickle people elected this 
Napoleon, who was no Bonaparte, President of the 
23 


THE LAST HOPE 


new Republic, and Europe was accorded a breathing 
space. At the beginning of 1849 arrangements were 
made for it — military arrangements — and the year 
was almost quiet. 

It was in the summer of the next year, 1850, that 
the Marquis de Gemosac journeyed to England. It 
was not his first visit to the country. Sixty years 
earlier he had been hurried thither by a frenzied 
mother, a little pale-faced boy, not bright or clever, 
but destined to pass through days of trial and years 
of sorrow which the bright and clever would scarcely, 
have survived. For brightness must always mean 
friction, while cleverness will continue to butt its head 
against human limitations so long as men shall walk 
this earth. 

He had been induced to make this journey thus, 
in the evening of his days, by the hope, hitherto vain 
enough, which many Frenchmen had pursued for half 
a century. For he was one of those who refused to 
believe that Louis XVII. had died in the prison of 
the Temple. 

Xot once, but many times, Dormer Colville laugh- 
ingly denied any responsibility in the matter. 

“I will not even tell the story as it was told to me,” 
he said to the Marquis de Gemosac, to the Abbe Tou- 
vent and to the Comtesse de Chantonnay, whom he 
met frequently enough at the house of his cousin, 
Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, in that which is now the 
24 


THE RETURN OF “THE LAST - HOPE” 

Province of the Charente Inferieure. “I will not 
even tell you the story as it was told to me, until one 
of you has seen the man. And then, if you ask me, 
I will tell you. It is nothing to me, you understand. 
I am no dreamer, but a very material person, who 
lives in France because he loves the sunshine, and the 
cuisine, and the good, kind hearts, which no govern- 
ment or want of government can deteriorate.” 

And Madame de Chantonnay, who liked Dormer 
Colville — with whom she admitted she always felt 
herself in sympathy — smiled graciously in response 
to his gallant bow. For she, too, was a materialist 
who loved the sunshine and the cuisine ; more especi- 
ally the cuisine. 

Moreover, Colville never persuaded the Marquis 
de Gemosac to come to England. He went so far as 
to represent, in a realistic light, the discomforts of 
the journey ; and only at the earnest desire of many 
persons concerned did he, at length, enter into the 
matter and good-naturedly undertake to accompany 
the aged traveller. 

So far as his story was concerned, he kept his word, 
entertaining the Marquis on the journey and during 
their two-days’ sojourn at the humble inn at Farling- 
ford with that flow of sympathetic and easy conversa- 
tion which always made Madame de Chantonnay pro- 
test that he was no Englishman at all, hut all that 
there was of the most French. Has it not been seen 
25 


THE LAST HOPE 


that Colville refused to translate the dark sayings of 
River Andrew by the side of the grass-grown grave, 
which seemed to have been brought to the notice of 
the travellers by the merest accident ? 

“I promised you that I should tell you nothing 
until you had seen him,” he repeated, as the Marquis 
followed with his eyes the movements of the group 
of which the man they called Loo Barebone formed 
the centre. 

Ho one took much notice of the two strangers. It 
is not considered good manners in a seafaring com- 
munity to appear to notice a new-comer. Captain 
Clubbe was naturally the object of universal atten- 
tion. Was he not bringing foreign money into Ear- 
lingford, where the local purses needed replenishing 
now that trade had fallen away and agriculture was 
so sorely hampered by the lack of roads across the 
marsh ? 

Clubbe pushed his way through the crowd to shake 
hands with the Rev. Septimus Marvin, who seemed to 
emerge from a visionary world of his own in order 
to perform that ceremony and to return thither on 
its completion. 

Then the majority of the onlookers straggled home 
ward, leaving a few wives and sweethearts waiting by 
the steps, with patient eyes fixed on the spidery fig- 
ures in the rigging of “The Last Hope.” Dormer 
Colville and the Marquis de Gemosac were left alone, 
26 


THE RETURN OF “THE LAST -HOPE’’ 

while the rector stood a few yards away, glaring ab- 
stractedly at them through his gold-rimmed spectacles 
as if they had been some strange flotsam cast up by 
the high tide. 

“I remember,” said Colville to his companion, 
“that I have an introduction to the pastor of the vil- 
lage, who, if I am not mistaken, is even now con- 
templating opening a conversation. It was given to 
me by my banker in Paris, who is a Suffolk man. 
You remember, Marquis, John Turner, of the Rue 
Lafayette ?” 

“Yes — yes,” answered the Marquis, absently. He 
was still watching the retreating villagers, with 
eyes old and veiled by the trouble that they had 
seen. 

“I will take this opportunity of presenting my- 
self,” said Colville, who was watching the little group 
from the rectory without appearing to do so. He 
rose as he spoke and went toward the clergyman, who 
was probably much younger than he looked. For he 
was ill-dressed and ill-shorn, with straggling gray hair 
hanging to his collar. He had a musty look, such as 
a hook may have that is laid on a shelf in a deserted 
room and never opened or read. Septimus Marvin, 
the world would say, had been laid upon a shelf when 
he was inducted to the spiritual cure of Farlingford. 
But no man is ever laid on a shelf by Fate. He climbs 
up there of his own will, and lies down beneath the 

27 


THE LAST HOPE 


dust of forgetfulness because he lacks the heart to 
arise and face the business of life. 

Seeing that Dormer Colville was approaching him, 
he came forward with a certain scholarly ease of man- 
ner as if he had once mixed with the best on an in- 
tellectual equality. 

Colville’s manners were considered perfect, especi- 
ally by those who were unable to detect a fine line 
said to exist between ease and too much ease. Mr. 
Marvin recollected John Turner well. Ten years 
earlier he had, indeed, corresponded at some length 
with the Paris banker respecting a valuable engrav- 
ing. Was Mr. Colville interested in engravings? 
Colville confessed to a deep and abiding pleasure 
in this branch of art, tempered, he admitted with 
a laugh, by a colossal ignorance. He then pro- 
ceeded to give the lie to his own modesty by talking 
easily and well of mezzotints and etchings. 

“But,” he said, interrupting himself with evident 
reluctance, “I am forgetting my obligations. Let me 
present to you my companion, an old friend, the Mar- 
quis de Gemosac.” 

The two gentlemen bowed, and Mr. Marvin, know- 
ing no French, proceeded to address the stranger in 
good British Latin, after the manner of the courtly 
divines of his day. Which Latin, from its mode of 
pronunciation, was entirely unintelligible to its 
hearer. 


28 


THE RETURN OF “THE LAST HOPE” 


In return, the rector introduced the two strangers 
to his niece, Miriam Liston. 

“The mainstay of my quiet house,” he added, with 
his vague and dreamy smile. 

“I have already heard of you,” said Dormer Col- 
ville at once, with his modest deference, “from my 
cousin, Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence.” 

He seemed, as sailors say, never to be at a loose 
end; but to go through life with a facile readiness, 
having, as it were, his hands full of threads among 
which to select, with a careless affability, one that 
must draw him nearer to high and low, men and 
women, alike. 

They talked together for some minutes, and, soon 
after the discovery that Miriam Liston was as good a 
French scholar as himself, and therefore able to con- 
verse with the Marquis de Gemosac, Colville regretted 
that it was time for them to return to their simple 
evening meal at “The Black Sailor.” 

“Well,” said Colville to Monsieur de Gemosac, as 
they walked slowly across the green toward the inn, 
embowered in its simple cottage-garden, all ablaze 
now with hollyhocks and lilies and poppies — “well, 
after your glimpse at this man, Marquis, are you de- 
sirous to see more of him ?” 

“My friend,” answered the Frenchman, with a 
quick gesture, descriptive of a sudden emotion not 
yet stilled, “he took my breath away. I can think of 
29 


THE LAST HOPE 


nothing else. My poor brain is buzzing still, and I 
know not wbat answers I made to that pretty English 
girl. Ah ! You smile at my enthusiasm ; you do not 
know what it is to have a great hope dangling be- 
fore the eyes all one’s life. And that face — that 
face!” 

In which judgment the Marquis was no doubt 
right. For Dormer Colville was too universal a man 
to be capable of concentrated zeal upon any one ob- 
ject. He laughed at the accusation. 

“ After dinner,” he answered, “I will tell you the 
little story as it was told to me. We can sit on this 
seat, outside the inn, in the scent of the flowers and 
smoke our cigarette.” 

To which proposal Monsieur de Gemosac assented 
readily enough. For he was an old man, and to such 
the importance of small things, such as dinner or a 
passing personal comfort, are apt to be paramount. 
Moreover, he was a remnant of that class to which 
France owed her downfall among the nations; a class 
represented faithfully enough by its King, Louis 
XVI., who procrastinated even on the steps of the 
guillotine. 

The wind went down with the sun, as had been 
foretold by River Andrew, and the quiet of twilight 
lay on the level landscape like sleep when the two 
travellers returned to the seat at the inn door. A 
distant curlew was whistling cautiously to its be- 
30 


THE RETURN OF “THE LAST 'HOPE” 


nighted mate, but all other sounds were still. The 
day was over. 

“You remember,” said Colville to his companion, 
“that six months after the execution of the King, 
a report ran through Paris and all France that 
the Dillons had succeeded in rescuing the Dauphin 
from the Temple.” 

“That was in July, 1793 — just fifty-seven years 
ago — the news reached me in Austria,” answered the 
Marquis. 

Colville glanced sideways at his companion, whose 
face was set with a stubbornness almost worthy of 
the tenacious Bourbons themselves. 

“The Queen was alive then,” went on the English- 
man, half diffidently, as if prepared for amendment 
or correction. “She had nearly three months to live. 
The separation from her children had only just been 
carried out. She was not broken by it yet. She was 
in full possession of her health and energy. She 
was one of the cleverest women of that time. 
She was surrounded by men, some of whom were 
frankly half-witted, others who were drunk with 
excess of a sudden power for which they had had 
no preparation. Others, again, were timorous or 
cunning. All were ignorant, and many had re- 
ceived no education at all. For there are many 
ignorant people who have been highly educated, 
Marquis.” 


31 


THE LAST HOPE 


He gave a short laugh and lighted a cigarette. 

“Mind,” he continued, after a pause devoted to re- 
flection, which appeared to be neither deep nor pain- 
ful, for he smiled as he gazed across the hazy marshes, 
“mind, I am no enthusiast, as you yourself have ob- 
served. I plead no cause. She was not my Queen, 
Marquis, and Prance is not my country. I endeavour 
to look at the matter with the eye of common-sense 
and wisdom. And I cannot, forget that Marie An- 
toinette was at bay : all her senses, all her wit alert. 
She can only have thought of her children. Human 
nature would dictate such thoughts. One cannot for- 
get that she had devoted friends, and that these friends 
possessed unlimited money. Do you think, Marquis, 
that any one man of that rabble was above the reach 
— of money ?” 

And Mr. Dormer Colville’s reflective smile, as he 
gazed at the distant sea, would seem to indicate that, 
after a considerable experience of men and women, 
he had reluctantly arrived at a certain conclusion re- 
specting them. 

“Ho man born of woman, Marquis, is proof against 
bribery or flattery — or both.” 

“One can believe anything that is bad of such dregs 
of human-kind, my friend,” said Monsieur de Gemo- 
sac, contemptuously. 

“I speak to one,” continued Colville, “who has 
given the attention of a lifetime to the subject. If 
32 


THE RETURN OF “THE LAST "HOPE” 


I am wrong, correct me. What I have been told is 
that a man was found who was ready, in return for a 
certain sum paid down, to substitute his own son for 
the little Dauphin — to allow his son to take the chance 
of coming alive out of that predicament. One can 
imagine that such a man could be found in E ranee at 
that period.” 

Monsieur de Gemosac turned, and looked at his 
companion with a sort of surprise. 

“You speak as if in doubt, Monsieur Colville,” he 
said, with a sudden assumption of that grand manner 
with which his father had faced the people on the 
Place de la Concorde — had taken a pinch of snuff in 
the shadow of the guillotine one sunny July day. 
“You speak as if in doubt. Such a man was found. 
I have spoken with him : I, who speak to you.” 


33 


CHAPTER IV 


THE MARQUISAS CREED 

Dormer Colville smiled doubtfully. He was too 
polite, it seemed, to be sceptical, and by his attitude 
expressed a readiness to be convinced as much from 
indifference as by reasoning. 

“It is intolerable,” said the Marquis de Gemosac, 
“that a man of your understanding should be misled 
by a few romantic writers in the pay of the Orleans.” 

“I am not misled, Marquis; I am ignorant,” 
laughed Colville. “It is not always the same thing.” 

Monsieur de Gemosac threw away his cigarette and 
turned eagerly toward his companion. 

“Listen,” he said. “I can convince you in a few 
words.” 

And Colville leaned back against the weather-worn 
seat with the air of one prepared to give a post- 
prandial attention. 

“Such a man was found as you yourself suggest. 
A boy was found who could not refuse to run that 
grfeat risk, who could not betray himself by indiscreet 
speech — because he was dumb. In order to allay cer- 
34 


THE MARQUIS’S CREED 

tain rumours which were going the round of Europe, 
the National Convention sent three of its members to 
visit the Dauphin in prison, and they themselves have 
left a record that he answered none of their questions 
and spoke no word to them. Why ? Because he was 
dumb. He merely sat and looked at them solemnly, 
as the dumb look. It was not the Dauphin at all. 
He was hidden in the loft above. The visit of the 
Conventional was not satisfactory. The rumours 
were not stilled by it. There is nothing so elu- 
sive or so vital as a rumour. Ah! you smile, my 
friend.” 

“I always give a careful attention to rumours,” ad- 
mitted Colville. “More careful than that which one 
accords to official announcements.” 

“Well, the dumb boy was not satisfactory. Those 
who were paid for this affair began to be alarmed. 
Not for their pockets. There was plenty of money. 
Half the crowned heads in Europe, and all the women, 
were ready to open their purses for the sake of a little 
boy, whose ill-treatment appealed to their soft hearts : 
who in a sense was sacred, for he was descended from 
sixty-six kings. No ! Barr as and all the other scoun- 
drels began to perceive that there was only one way 
out of the difficulty into which they had blundered. 
The Dauphin must die! So the dumb boy disap- 
peared. One wonders whither he went and what his 
fate might be ” 


35 


THE LAST HOPE 


“With so much to tell,” put in Dormer Colville, 
musingly; “so much unspoken.” 

It was odd how the roles had been reversed. Eor 
the Marquis de Gemosac was now eagerly seeking to 
convince his companion. The surest way to persuade 
a man is to lead him to persuade himself. 

“The only solution was for the Dauphin to die — 
in public. So another substitution w r as effected,” con- 
tinued Monsieur de Gemosac. “A dying boy from 
the hospital was made to play the part of the Dauphin. 
He was not at all like him ; for he was tall and dark — 
taller and darker than a son of Louis XVI. and Marie 
Antoinette could ever have been. The prison was 
reconstructed so that the sentry on guard could not 
see his prisoner, but was forced to call to him in order 
to make sure that he was there. It was a pity that he 
did not resemble the Dauphin at all, this scrofulous 
child. But they were in a hurry, and they were at 
their wits’ ends. And it is not always easy to find a 
boy who will die in a given time. This boy had to 
die, however, by some means or other. It was for 
France, you understand, and the safety of the Great 
Kepublic.” 

“One hopes that he appreciated his privilege,” ob- 
served Colville, philosophically. 

“And he must die in public, duly certified for by 
persons of undoubted integrity. They called in, at 
the last moment, Desault, a great doctor of that day. 

36 


THE MARQUIS’S CREED 

But Desault was, unfortunately, honest. He went 
home and told his assistant that this was not the 
Dauphin, and that, whoever he might be, he was 
being poisoned* The assistant’s name was Chop- 
part, and this Choppart made up a medicine, on 
Desault’s prescription, which was an antidote to 
/ poison.” 

Monsieur de Gemosac paused, and, turning to his 
companion, held up one finger to command his full 
attention. 

“Desault died, my friend, four days later, and 
Choppart died five days after him, and the boy in the 
Temple died three days after Choppart. And no one 
knows what they died of. They were pretty bunglers, 
those gentlemen of the Republic! Of course, they 
called in others in a hurry ; men better suited to their 
purpose. And one of these, the citizen Pelletan, has 
placed on record some preposterous lies. These doc- 
tors certified that this was the Dauphin. They had 
never seen him before, but what matter ? Great care 
was taken to identify the body. Persons of position, 
who had never seen the son of Louis XVI., were in- 
vited to visit the Temple. Several of them had the 
temerity to protect themselves in the certificate. ‘We 
saw what we were informed was the body of the Dau- 
phin,’ they said.” 

Again the old man turned, and held up his hand 
in a gesture of warning. 

37 


THE LAST HOPE 


“If they wanted a witness whose testimony was 
without question — whose word would have laid the 
whole question in that lost and forgotten grave for- 
ever — they had one in the room above. For the Dau- 
phin^ sister was there, Marie Therese Charlotte, she 
who is now Duchess of Angouleme. Why did they not 
bring her down to see the body, to testify that her 
brother was dead and the line of Louis XVI. ended ? 
Was it chivalry ? I ask you if these had shown chiv- 
alry to Madame de Lamballe ? to Madame Elizabeth ? 
to Marie Antoinette ? Was it kindness toward a child 
of unparalleled misfortune? I ask you if they had 
been kind to those whom they called the children of 
the tyrant ? No ! They did not conduct her to that 
bedside, because he who lay there was not her brother. 
Are we children, monsieur, to be deceived by a tale 
of a sudden softness of heart ? They wished to spare 
this child the pain! Had they ever spared anyone 
pain — the National Assembly ?” 

And the Marquis de Gemosac’s laugh rang with a 
hatred which must, it seems, outlive the possibility 
of revenge. 

“There was to be a public funeral. Such a cere- 
mony would have been of incalculable value at that 
time. But, at the last minute, their courage failed 
them. The boy was thrown into a forgotten corner 
of a Paris churchyard, at nine o’clock one night, with- 
out witnesses. The spot itself cannot now be identi- 
38 


THE MARQUIS'S CREED 

fied. Do you tell me that that was the Dauphin? 
Bah ! my friend, the thing was too childish !” 

“The ignorant and the unlettered, ,, observed Col- 
ville, with the air of making a concession, “are al- 
ways at a disadvantage — even in crime.” 

“That the Dauphin was, in the meantime, con- 
cealed in the garret of the Tower appears to be cer- 
tain. That he was finally conveyed out of the prison 
in a clothes-basket is as certain, monsieur, as it is 
certain that the sun will rise to-morrow. And I be- 
lieve that the Queen knew, when she went to the 
guillotine, that her son was no longer in the Temple. 
I believe that Heaven sent her that one scrap of com- 
fort, tempered as it was by the knowledge that her 
daughter remained a prisoner in their hands. But it 
was to her son that her affections were given. For 
the Duchess never had the gift of winning love. As 
she is now — a cold, hard, composed woman — so she 
was in her prison in the Temple at the age of fifteen. 
You may take it from one who has known her all his 
life. And from that moment to this ” 

The Marquis paused, and made a gesture with his 
hands, descriptive of space and the unknown. 

“From that moment to this — nothing. Nothing 
of the Dauphin.” 

He turned in his seat and looked questioningly up 
toward the crumbling church, with its square tower, 
stricken, years ago, by lightning; with its grass-grown 
39 


THE LAST HOPE 


graveyard marked by stones all gray and hoary with 
immense age and the passage of cold and stormy win- 
ters. 

“Who knows,” he added, “what may have become 
of him? Who can say where he lies? For a life 
begun as his began was not likely to be a long one. 
Though troubles do not kill. Witness myself, who 
am five years his senior.” 

Colville looked at him in obedience to an inviting 
gesture of the hand; looked as at something he did 
not understand, something beyond his understanding, 
perhaps. For the troubles had not been Monsieur de 
Gemosac’s own troubles, but those of his country. 

“And the Duchess ?” said the Englishman at 
length, after a pause, “at Frohsdorf — what does she 
say — or think ?” 

“She says nothing,” replied the Marquis de Gemo- 
sac, sharply. “She is silent, because the world is 
listening for every word she may utter. What she 
thinks. . . . Ah! who knows? She is an old 

woman, my friend, for she is seventy-one. Her mem- 
ories are a millstone about her neck. Ho wonder 
she is silent. Think what her life has been. As a 
child, three years of semi-captivity at the Tuileries, 
with the mob howling round the railings. Three and 
a half years a prisoner in the Temple. Both parents 
sent to the guillotine — her aunt to the same. All her 
world — massacred. As a girl, she was collected, ma- 
40 


THE MARQUIS’S CREED 

jestic; or else she could not have survived those years 
in the Temple, alone — the last of her family. What 
must her thoughts have been, at night in her prison ? 
As a woman, she is cold, sad, unemotional. Ho one 
ever lived through* such troubles with so little display 
of feeling. The Restoration, the Hundred Days, the 
second Restoration, Louis XVIII., and his flight to 
England; Charles X., and his abdication; her own 
husband, the Due d’Angouleme — the Dauphin for 
many years, the king for half an hour — these are 
some of her experiences. She has lived for forty 
years in exile in Mittau, Memel, Warsaw, Konigs- 
berg, Prague, England; and now she is at Frohsdorf, 
awaiting the end. You ask me what she says? She 
says nothing, but she knows — she has always known 
— that her brother did not die in the Temple. ,, 

“Then — ” suggested Colville, who certainly had 
acquired the French art of putting much meaning 
into one word. 

“Then why not seek him ? you would ask. How 
do you know that she has not done so, my friend, with 
tears ? But as years passed on, and brought no word 
of him, it became less and less desirable. While Louis 
XVIII. continued to reign there was no reason to 
wish to find Louis XVII., you understand. For there 
was still a Bourbon, of the direct line, upon the 
throne. Louis XVIII. would scarcely desire it. One 
would not expect him to seek very diligently for one 
41 


THE LAST HOPE 


who would deprive him of the crown. Charles X., 
knowing he must succeed his brother, was no more 
enthusiastic in the search. And the Duchess d’An- 
gouleme herself ? you ask. I can see the question in 
your face.” 

“Yes,” conceded Colville. “Eor, after all, he was 
her brother.” 

“Yes — and if she found him what would be the 
result ? Her uncle would be driven from the throne ; 
her father-in-law would not inherit; her own hus- 
band, the Dauphin, would be Dauphin no longer. She 
herself could never be Queen of France. It is a hard 
thing to say of a woman ” 

Monsieur de Gemosac paused for a moment in re- 
flection. 

“Yes,” he said, at length, “a hard thing. But this 
is a hard world, Monsieur Colville, and will not allow 
either men or women to be angels. I have known and 
served the Duchess all my life, and I confess that she 
has never lost sight of the fact that, should Louis 
XVII. be found, she herself would never be Queen 
of France. One is not a Bourbon for nothing.” 

“One is not a stateswoman and a daughter of kings 
for nothing,” amended Colville, with his tolerant 
laugh ; for he was always ready to make allowances. 
“Better, perhaps, that France should be left quiet, 
under the regime she had accepted, than disturbed 
by the offer of another regime, which might be less 
42 


THE MARQUIS'S CREED 

acceptable. You always remind me — you, who deal 
with France — of a lion-tamer at a circus. You have 
a very slight control over your performing beasts. If 
they refuse to do the trick you propose, you do not 
press it, but pass on to another trick; and the bars 
of the cage always appear to the onlooker to be very 
inadequate. Perhaps it was better, Marquis, to let 
the Dauphin go ; to pass him over, and proceed to the 
tricks suitable to the momentary humour of your wild 
animals." 

The Marquis de Gemosac gave a curt laugh, which 
thrilled with a note of that fearful joy known to those 
who seek to control the uncontrollable. 

“At that time," he admitted, “it might be so. But 
not now\ At that time there lived Louis XVIII. and 
Charles X., and his sons, the Due d’Angouleme and 
the Due de Berri, who might reasonably be expected 
to have sons in their turn. There were plenty of 
Bourbons, it seemed. And now — where are they? 
What is left of them ?" 

He gave a nod of the head toward the sea that lay 
between him and Germany. 

“One old woman, over there, at Frohsdorf, the 
daughter of Marie Antoinette, awaiting the end of 
her bitter pilgrimage — and this Comte de Chambord. 
This man who will not when he may. No, my 
friend, it has never been so necessary to find Louis 
XVII. as it is now. Necessary for France — for the 
43 


THE LAST HOPE 

whole world. This Prince President; this last off- 
shoot of a pernicious republican growth will drag us 
all in the mud if he gets his way with France. And 
those who have watched with seeing eyes have always 
known that such a time as the present must eventually 
come. For France will always be the victim of a 
clever adventurer. We have foreseen it, and for that 
reason we have treated as serious possibilities these 
false Dauphins who have sprung up like mushrooms 
all over Europe and even in America. And what 
have they proved ? What have the Bourbons proved 
in frustrating their frauds ? That the son of Louis 
XVI. did not die in the Temple. That is all. And 
Madame herself has gathered further strength to her 
conviction that the little king was not buried in that 
forgotten corner of the graveyard of Sainte Mar- 
guerite. At the same time, she knows that none of 
these — neither Naundorff, nor Havergault, nor Bru- 
neau, nor de Richemont, nor any other pretender — 
was her brother. No ! The king, either because he 
did not know he was king, or because he had had 
enough of royalty, never came forward and never be- 
trayed his whereabouts. He was to be sought ; he is 
still to be sought. And it is now that he is wanted.” 

“That is why I offer to tell you this story now. 
That is my reason for bringing you to Farlingford 
now,” said Colville, quietly. It seemed that he must 
have awaited, as the wise do in this world, the pro- 
44 


THE MARQUIS’S CREED 

pitious moment, and should it never come they are 
content to forego their purpose. He gave a light 
laugh and stretched out his long legs, contemplating 
his strapped trousers and neat boots with the eye of 
a connoisseur. “And should I he the humble means 
of doing a good turn to F ranee and others, will F ranee 
— and others — remember it, I wonder. Perhaps I 
hold in my hands the Hope of France, Marquis.” 

He paused, and lapsed for a moment into thought. 
It was eight o’clock, and the long northern twilight 
was fading into darkness now. The bell of Captain 
Clubbe’s ship rang out the hour — a new sound in the 
stillness of this forgotten town. 

“The Last Hope,” added Dormer Colville, with a 
queer laugh. 


45 


CHAPTER V 


ON THE DYKE 

Neither had spoken again when their thoughts 
were turned aside from that story which Colville, 
instead of telling, had been called upon to hear. 

For the man whose story it presumably was passed 
across the green ere the sound of the ship’s bell had 
died away. He had changed his clothes, or else it 
would have appeared that he was returning to his 
ship. He walked with his head thrown up, with long 
lithe steps, with a gait and carriage so unlike the 
heavy tread of men wearing sea-boots all their work- 
ing days, that none would have believed him to be 
born and bred in Farlingford. For it is not only in 
books that history is written, but in the turn of a 
head, in the sound of a voice, in the vague and dreamy 
thoughts half formulated by the human mind twixt 
sleeping and waking. 

Monsieur de Gemosac paused, with his cigarette 
held poised half way to his lips, and watched the man 
go past, while Dormer Colville, leaning back against 
the wall, scanned him sideways between lowered 
lids. 


46 


OX THE DYKE 


It would seem that Barebone must have an ap- 
pointment. He walked without looking about him, 
like one who is late. He rather avoided than sought 
the greeting of a friend from the open cottage-doors 
as he passed on. On reaching the quay he turned 
quickly to the left, following the path that led toward 
the dyke at the riverside. 

“He is no sailor at heart,” commented Colville. 
“He never even glanced at his ship.” 

“And yet it was he who steered the ship in that 
dangerous river.” 

“He may be skilful in anything he undertakes,” 
suggested Colville, in explanation. “It is Captain 
Clubbe who will tell us that. For Captain Clubbe 
has known him since his birth, and was the friend 
of his father.” 

They sat in silence watching the shadowy figure 
on the dyke, outlined dimly against the hazy hori- 
zon. He was walking, still with haste as if to a cer- 
tain destination, toward the rectory buried in its 
half circle of crouching trees. And already another 
shadow was hurrying from the house to meet him. 
It was the boy, little Sep Marvin, and in the still- 
ness of the evening his shrill voice could be heard 
in excited greeting. 

“What have you brought ? What have you 
brought ?” he was crying, as he ran toward Barebone. 
They seemed to have so much to say to each other 
47 


THE LAST HOPE 


that they could not wait until they came within 
speaking distance. The boy took Barebone’s hand, 
and turning walked back with him to the old house 
peeping over the dyke toward the sea. He could 
scarcely walk quietly, for joy at the return of his 
friend, and skipped from side to side, pouring out 
questions and answering them himself as children 
and women do. 

But Barebone gave him only half of his attention 
and looked before him with grave eyes, while the 
boy talked of nests and knives. Barebone was look- 
ing toward the garden, concealed like an intrench- 
ment behind the dyke. It was a quiet evening, and 
the rector was walking slowly backward and forward 
on the raised path, made on the dyke itself, like a 
ship-captain on his quarter-deck, with hands clasped 
behind his bent back and eyes that swept the hori- 
zon at each turn with a mechanical monotony. At 
one end of the path, which was worn smooth by the 
Reverend Septimus Marvin’s pensive foot, the gleam 
of a white dress betrayed the presence of his niece, 
Miriam Liston. 

“Ah, is that you?” asked the rector, holding out 
a limp hand. “Yes. I remember Sep was allowed 
to sit up till half-past eight in the hope that you 
might come round to see us. Well, Loo, and how 
are you? Yes — yes.” 

And he looked vaguely out to sea, repeating below 
48 


ON THE DYKE 


his breath the words “Yes — -yes” almost in a 
whisper, as if communing secretly with his own 
thoughts out of hearing of the world. 

“Of course I should come round to see you,” 
answered Barebone. “Where else should I go? So 
soon as^ we had had tea and I could change my 
clothes and get away from that dear Mrs. Clubbe. 
It seems so strange to come back here from the racket- 
ing world — and Erance is a racketing world of its 
own — and find everything in Farlingford just the 
same.” 

He had shaken hands with the rector and with 
Miriam Liston as he spoke, and his speech was not 
the speech of Farlingford men at all, but rather of 
Septimus Marvin himself, of whose voice he had 
acquired the ring of education, while adding to it a 
neatness and quickness of enunciation which must 
have been his own; for none in Suffolk could have 
taught it to him. 

“Just the same,” he repeated, glancing at the book 
Miriam Liston had laid aside for a moment to greet 
him and had now taken up again. “That book must 
be very large print,” he said, “for you to be able to 
read by this light.” 

“It is large print,” answered the girl, with a 
friendly laugh, as she returned to it. 

“And you are still resolved to be a sailor?” in- 
quired Septimus Marvin, looking at him with kind 
49 


THE LAST HOPE 


eyes for ever asleep, it would appear, in some long 
slumber which must have been the death of one of 
the sources of human energy — of ambition or of 
hope. 

“Until I find a better calling,” answered Loo Bare- 
bone, with his eager laugh. “When I am away I 
wonder how any can be content to live in Farling- 
ford and let the world go by. And when I am here 
I wonder how any can be so foolish as to fret and 
fume in the restless world while he might be sitting 
quietly at Farlingford.” 

“Ah,” murmured the rector, musingly, “you 
are for the world. You, with your capacities, your 
quickness for learning, your — well, your lightness of 
heart, my dear Loo. That goes far in the great 
world. To be light of heart — to amuse. Yes, you 
are for the world. You might do something 
there.” 

“And nothing in Farlingford?” inquired Bare- 
bone, gaily ; but he turned, as he spoke, and glanced 
once more at Miriam Liston as if in some dim way 
the question could not be answered by any other. 
She was absorbed in her book again. The print must 
indeed have been large and clear, for the twilight 
was fading fast. 

She looked up and met his glance with direct and 
steady eyes of a starry gray. A severe critic of that 
which none can satisfactorily define — a woman’s 
50 


ON THE DYKE 


beauty — would have objected that her face was too 
wide, and her chin too square. Her hair, which was 
of a bright brown, grew with a singular strength and 
crispness round a brow which was serene and square. 
In her eyes there shone the light of tenacity, and a 
steady purpose. A student of human nature must 
have regretted that the soul looking out of such eyes 
should have been vouchsafed to a woman. For 
strength and purpose in a man are usually exercised 
for the good of mankind, while in a woman such 
qualities must, it would seem, benefit no more than 
one man of her own generation, and a few who may 
follow her in the next. 

“There is nothing,” she said, turning to her book 
again, “for a man to do in Farlingford.” 

“And for a woman — ?” inquired Barebone, with- 
out looking at her. 

“There is always something — everywhere.” 

And Septimus Marvin’s reflective “Yes — yes,” as 
he paused in his walk and looked seaward, came in 
appropriately as a grave confirmation of Miriam’s 
jesting statement. 

“Yes — yes,” he repeated, turning toward Bare- 
bone, who stood listening to the boy’s chatter. “You 
find us as you left us, Loo. Was it six months ago? 
Ah! How time flies when one remains stationary. 
For you, I daresay, it seems more.” 

“For me — oh yes, it seems more,” replied Bare- 
51 


THE LAST HOPE 

bone, with his gay laugh, and a glance toward 
Miriam. 

“A little older,” continued the rector. “The church 
a little mouldier. Earlingford a little emptier. Old 
Godbold is gone — the last of the Godbolds of Far- 
lingford, which means another empty cottage in the 
street.” 

“I saw it as I came down,” answered Barebone. 
“They look like last year’s nests — those empty cot- 
tages. But you have been all well, here at the 
rectory, since we sailed? The cottages — well, they 
are only cottages after all.” 

Miriam’s eyes were raised for a moment from her 
book. 

“Is it like that they talk in France?” she asked. 
“Are those the sentiments of the great republic?” 

Barebone laughed aloud. 

“I thought I could make you look up from your 
book,” he answered. “One has merely to cast a slur 
upon the poor — your dear poor of Farlingford — and 
you are up in arms in an instant. But I am not the 
person to cast a slur, since I am one of the poor of 
Farlingford myself, and owe it to charity — to the 
charity of the rectory — that I can read and write.” 

“But it came to you very naturally,” observed 
Marvin, looking vaguely across the marshes to the 
roofs of the village, “to suggest that those who live 

in cottages are of a different race of beings ” 

52 


ON THE DYKE 


He broke off, following his own thoughts in 
silence, as men soon learn to do who have had no 
companion by them capable of following whither- 
soever they may lead. 

“Did it?” asked Barebone, sharply. He turned 
to look at his old friend and mentor with a sudden 
quick distress. “I hope not. I hope it did not sound 
like that. For you have never taught me such 
thoughts, have you ? Quite the contrary. And I 
cannot have learned it from Clubbe.” 

He broke off with a laugh of relief, for he had per- 
ceived that Septimus Marvin’s thoughts were already 
elsewhere. 

“Perhaps you are right,” he added, turning to 
Miriam. “It may be that one should go to a republic 
in order to learn — once for all — that all men are not 
equal.” 

“You say it with so much conviction,” was the re- 
tort, “that you must have known it before. ” 

“But I do not know it. I deny such knowledge. 
Where could I have learned such a principle ?” 

He spread out his arms in emphatic denial. For 
he was quick in all his gestures — quick to laugh or 
be grave — quick, with the rapidity of a woman to 
catch a thought held back by silence or concealed in 
speech. 

Marvin merely looked at him with a dreamy smile 
and lapsed again into those speculations which 
53 


THE LAST HOPE 


filled his waking moments; for the business of life 
never received his full attention. He contemplated 
the world from afar off and was like that blind 
man at Bethsaida who saw men as trees walking, 
and rubbed his eyes and wondered. He turned 
at the sound of the church clock and looked at his 
son, whose attitude toward Barehone was that of an 
admiring younger brother. 

“Sep,” he said, “your extra half-hour has passed. 
You will have time to-morrow and for many days to 
come to exchange views with Loo.” 

The boy was old before his time, as the children of 
elderly parents always are. 

“Very well,” he said, with a grave nod. “But you 
must not tell Loo where those young herons are after 
I am gone to bed.” 

He went slowly toward the house, looking back 
suspiciously from time to time. 

“Herons ? no. Why should I ? Where are they ?” 
muttered Mr. Marvin, vaguely, and he absent- 
mindedly followed his son, leaving Miriam Liston 
sitting in the turf shelter, built like an embrasure 
in the dyke, and Barebone standing a little distance 
from her, looking at her. 

A silence fell upon them. The silence that follows 
the departure of a third person when those who are 
left behind turn a new page. Miriam laid her book 
upon her lap and looked across the river now slowly 
54 


ON THE DYKE 


turning to its ebb. She did not look at Barebone, 
but her eyes were conscious of his proximity. Her 
attitude, like his, seemed to indicate the knowledge 
that this moment had been inevitable from the first, 
and that there was no desire on either part to avoid 
it or to hasten its advent. 

“I had a haunting fear as we came up the river,” 
he said at length, quietly and with an odd courtesy 
of manner, “that you might have gone away. That 
is the calamity always hanging over this quiet 
house.” 

He spoke with the ease of manner which always 
indicates a long friendship, or a close “camaraderie,” 
resulting from common interests, or a common en- 
deavour. 

“Why should I go away ?” she asked. 

“On the other hand, why should you stay ?” 

“Because I fancy I am wanted,” she replied, in 
the lighter tone which he had used. “It is gratify- 
ing to one's vanity, you know, whether it be true 
or not.” 

“Oh, it is true enough. One cannot imagine what 
they would do without you.” 

He was watching Septimus Marvin as he spoke. 
Sep had joined him and was walking gravely by his 
side toward the house. They were ill-assorted. 

“But there is a limit even to self-sacrifice and — 
well, there is another world open to you.” 

55 


THE LAST HOPE 


She gave a curt laugh as if he had touched a topic 
upon which they would disagree. 

“Oh — yes,” he laughed. “I leave myself open to 
a tu quoque , I know. There are other worlds open 
to me also, you would say.” 

He looked at her with his gay and easy smile ; but 
she made no answer, and her resolute lips closed to- 
gether sharply. The subject had been closed; by some 
past conversation or incident which had left a 
memory. 

“Who are those two men staying at ‘The Black 
Sailor’?” she asked, changing the subject, or only 
turning into a by-way,, perhaps. “You saw them.” 

She seemed to take it for granted that he should 
have seen them, though he had not appeared to look 
in their direction. 

“Oh — yes. I saw them, but I do not know who 
they are. I came straight here as soon as I could.” 

“One of them is a Frenchman,” she said, taking 
no heed of the excuse given for his ignorance of Far- 
lingford news. 

“The old man — I thought so. I felt it when I 
looked at him. It was perhaps a fellow feeling. I 
suppose I am a Frenchman after all. Clubbe always 
says I am one when I am at the wheel and let the 
ship go off the wind.” 

Miriam was looking along the dyke, peering into 
the gathering darkness. 


56 


OjST the dyke 


“One of them is coming toward ns now,” she said, 
almost warninglv. “Hot the Marquis de Gemosac, 
hut the other — the Englishman.” 

“Confound him,” muttered Barebone. “What 
does he want ?” 

And to judge from Mr. Dormer Colville’s pace it 
would appear that he chiefly desired to interrupt 
their tete-a-tete. 


57 


CHAPTER VI 


THE STORY OF THE CASTAWAYS 

When River Andrew stated that there were few 
in Farlingford who knew more of Frenchman than 
himself, it is to be presumed that he spoke by the 
letter, and under the reserve that Captain Clubbe 
was not at the moment on shore. 

For Captain Clubbe had known Frenchman since 
boyhood. 

“I understand,” said Dormer Colville to him two 
or three days after the arrival of The Last Hope, 
“that the Marquis de Gemosac cannot do better than 
apply to you for some information he desires to 
possess. In fact, it is on that account that we are 
here.” 

The introduction had been a matter requiring 
patience. For Captain Clubbe had not laid aside 
in his travels a certain East- Anglian distrust of the 
unknown. He had, of course, noted the presence 
of the strangers when he landed at Farlingford 
quay, but his large, immobile face had betrayed no 
peculiar interest. There had been plenty to tell him 
58 


THE STORY OF THE CASTAWAYS 

all that was known of Monsieur de Gemosac and 
Dormer Colville, and a good deal that was only sur- 
mised. But the imagination of even the darksome 
River Andrew failed to soar successfully under the 
measuring blue eye, and the total lack of comment 
of Captain Clubbe. 

There was, indeed, little to tell, although the stran- 
gers had been seen to go to the rectory in quite a 
friendly way, and had taken a glass of sherry in the 
rector’s study. Mrs. Clacy was responsible for this 
piece of news, and her profession giving her the 
entree to almost every back door in Farlingford 
enabled her to gather news at the fountain-head. 
For Mrs. Clacy went out to oblige. She obliged the 
rectory on Mondays, and Mrs. Clubbe, with what 
was technically described as the heavy wash, on 
Tuesdays. Whatever Mrs. Clacy was asked to do 
she could perform with a rough efficiency. But she 
always undertook it with reluctance. It was not, 
she took care to mention, what she was accustomed 
to, but she would do it to oblige. Her charge was 
eighteen-pence a day with her dinner, and (she made 
the addition with a raised eyebrow, and the resigned 
sigh of one who takes her meals as a duty toward 
those dependent on her) a bit of tea at the end of 
the day. 

It was on a Wednesday that Dormer Colville met 
Captain Clubbe face to face in the street, and was 
59 


THE LAST HOPE 


forced to curb his friendly smile and half-formed 
nod of salutation. For Captain Clubbe went past 
him with a rigid face and steadily averted eyes, like 
a walking monument. For there was something in 
the captain’s deportment dimly suggestive of stone, 
and the dignity of stillness. His face meant se- 
curity, his large limbs a slow, sure action. 

Colville and Monsieur de Gemosac were on the 
quay in the afternoon at high tide when “The Last 
Hope” was warped on to the slip-way. All Farling- 
ford was there too, and Captain Clubbe carried out 
the difficult task with hardly any words at all from 
a corner of the jetty, with Loo Barebone on board 
as second in command. 

Captain Clubbe could not fail to perceive the 
strangers, for they stood a few yards from him, Mon- 
sieur de Gemosac peering with his yellow eyes toward 
the deck of “The Last Hope,” where Barebone stood 
on . the forecastle giving the orders transmitted to 
him by a sign from his taciturn captain. Colville 
seemed to take a greater interest in the proceed- 
ings, and noted the skill and precision of the crew 
with the air of a seaman. 

Presently, Septimus Marvin wandered down the 
dyke and stood irresolutely at the far corner of the 
jetty. He always approached his flock with diffi- 
dence, although they treated him kindly enough, 
much as they treated such of their own children as 
60 


THE STORY OF THE CASTAWAYS 

were handicapped in the race of life by some mal- 
formation or mental incapacity. 

Dormer Colville approached him and they stood 
side by side until “The Last Hope” was safely 
moored and chocked. Then it was that the rector 
introduced the two strangers to Captain Clubbe. 
It being a Wednesday, Clubbe must have known 
all that there was to knoAv, and more, of Monsieur 
de Gemosac and Dormer Colville; for Mrs. Clacy, 
it will be remembered, obliged Mrs. Clubbe on 
Tuesdays. Nothing, however, in the mask-like face, 
large and square, of the ship-captain indicated that 
he knew aught of his new acquaintances, or desired 
to know more. And when Colville frankly ex- 
plained their presence in Farlingford, Captain 
Clubbe nodded gravely and that was all. 

“We can wait, however, until a more suitable op- 
portunity presents itself,” Colville hastened to add. 
“You are busy, as even a landsman can perceive, and 
cannot be expected to think of anything but your 
vessel until the tide leaves her high and dry.” 

He turned and explained the situation to the 
Marquis, who shrugged his shoulders impatiently as 
if at the delay. For he was a southerner, and was, 
perhaps, ignorant of the fact that in dealing with 
any born on the shores of the German Ocean nothing 
is gained and, more often than not, all is lost by 
haste. 


61 


THE LAST HOPE 


“You hear!” Colville added, turning to the Cap- 
tain, and speaking in a curter manner ; for so strongly 
was he moved by that human kindness which is 
vaguely called sympathy that his speech varied ac- 
cording to his listener. “You hear the Marquis only 
speaks French. It is about a fellow-countryman of 
his buried here. Drop in and have a glass of wine 
with us some evening; to-night, if you are at 
liberty.” 

“What I can tell you won’t take long,” said 
Clubbe, over his shoulders ; for the tide was turning, 
and in a few minutes would be ebbing fast. 

“Daresay not. But we have a good bin of claret 
at ‘The Black Sailor,’ and shall be glad of your 
opinion on it.” 

Clubbe nodded, with a curt laugh, which might 
have been intended to deprecate the possession of 
any opinion on a vintage, or perhaps to express his 
disbelief that Dormer Colville desired to have it. 

Nevertheless, his large person loomed in the dusk 
of the trees soon after sunset, in the narrow road 
leading from his house to the church and the 
green. 

Monsieur de Gemosac and his companion were 
sitting on the bench outside the inn, leaning against 
the sill of their own parlour window, which stood 
open. The Captain had changed his clothes, and 
now wore those in which he went to church and to 
02 


THE STOKY OF THE CASTAWAYS 

the custom-house when in London or other large 
cities. 

“There walks a just man,” commented Dormer 
Colville, lightly, and no longer word could have de- 
scribed Captain Clubbe more aptly. He would 
rather have stayed in his own garden this evening 
to smoke his pipe in contemplative silence. But he 
had always foreseen that the day might come when 
it would be his duty to do his best by Loo Barebone. 
He had not sought this opportunity, because, being 
a wise as well as a just man, he was not quite sure 
that he knew what the best would be. 

He shook hands gravely with the strangers, and by 
his manner seemed to indicate his comprehension of 
Monsieur de Gemosac’s well-turned phrases of wel- 
come. Dormer Colville appeared to be in a silent 
humour, unless perchance he happened to be one of 
those rare beings who can either talk or hold their 
tongues as occasion may demand. 

“You won’t want me to put my oar in, I see,” ob- 
served he, tentatively, as he drew forward a small 
table whereon were set three glasses and a bottle of 
the celebrated claret. 

“I can understand French but I don’t talk it,” 
replied the Captain, stolidly. 

“And if I interpret as we go along we shall sit 
here all night and get very little said.” 

Colville explained the difficulty to the Marquis de 
63 


THE LAST HOPE 


Gemosac and agreed with him that much time would 
be saved if Captain Clubbe would be kind enough 
to tell in English all that he knew of the nameless 
Erenchman buried in Earlingford churchyard, to be 
translated by Colville to Monsieur de Gemosac at 
another time. As Clubbe understood this, and 
nodded in acquiescence, there only remained to them 
to draw the cork and light their cigars. 

"Not much to tell,” said Clubbe, guardedly. "But 
what there is is no secret so far as I know. It has 
not been told because it was known long ago and has 
been forgotten since. The man’s dead and buried 
and there’s an end of him.” 

"Of him, yes, hut not of his race,” answered Col- 
ville. 

"You mean the lad ?” inquired the Captain, turn- 
ing his calm and steady gaze to Colville’s face. The 
whole man seemed to turn, ponderously and steadily, 
like a siege-gun. 

"That is what I meant,” answered Colville. "You 
understand,” he went on to explain as if urged 
thereto by the fixed glance of the clear blue eye — "you 
understand, it is none of my business. I am only 
here as the Marquis de Gemosac’s friend. Know 
him in his own country where I live most of the 
time.” 

Clubbe nodded. 

"Frenchman was picked up at sea fifty-five years 

64 


THE STORY OF THE CASTAWAYS 

ago this J uly,” he narrated, bluntly, “by the ‘Martha 
and Mary’ brig of this port. I was apprentice at the 
time. Frenchman was a boy with fair hair and a 
womanish face. Bit of a cry-baby I used to think 
him, but being a boy myself I was perhaps hard on 
him. He was with his — well, his mother.” 

Captain Clubbe paused. He took the cigar from 
his lips and carefully replaced the outer leaf, which 
had wrinkled. Perhaps he waited to be asked a 
question. Colville glanced at him sideways and did 
not ask it. 

“Dark night,” the Captain continued, after a short 
silence, “and a heavy sea, about mid-channel off 
Dieppe. We sighted a French fishing-boat yawing 
about abandoned. Something queer about her, the 
skipper thought. Those were queer times in France. 
We hailed her, and getting no answer put out a boat 
and boarded her. There was nobody on board but a 
woman and a child. Woman was half mad with fear. 
I have seen many afraid, but never one like that. I 
was only a boy myself, but I remember thinking it 
wasn’t the sea and drowning she was afraid of. We 
couldn’t find out the smack’s name. It had been 
painted out with a tar-brush, and she was half full 
of water. The skipper took the woman and child 
off and left the fishing-smack as we found her yaw- 
ing about — all sail set. They reckoned she would 
founder in a few minutes. But there was one old 
G5 


THE LAST HOPE 


man on board, the boatswain, who had seen many 
years at sea, who said that she wasn’t making any 
water at all, because he had been told to look for the 
leak and couldn’t find it. He said that the water 
had been pumped into her so as to waterlog her ; and 
it was his belief that she had not been abandoned 
many minutes, that the crew were hanging about 
somewhere near in a boat waiting to see if we sighted 
her and put men on board.” 

Mr. Dormer Colville was attending to the claret 
and pressed Captain Clubbe by a gesture of the hand 
to empty his glass. 

“Something wrong somewhere ?” he suggested, in 
a conversational way. 

“By daylight we were ramping up channel with 
three French men-of-war after us,” was Captain 
Clubbe’s comprehensive reply. “As chance had it, 
the channel squadron hove in sight round the Fore- 
land and the Frenchmen turned and left us.” 

Clubbe marked a pause in his narrative by a glass 
of claret taken at one draught like beer. 

“Skipper was a Farlingford man, name of Doy,” 
he continued. “Long as he lived he was pestered 
by inquiries from the French government respecting 
a Dieppe fishing-smack supposed to have been picked 
up abandoned at sea. He had picked up no fishing- 
smack, and he answered no letters about it. He was 
an old man when it happened and he died at sea soon 
66 


THE STORY OF THE CASTAWAYS 


after my indentures expired. The woman and child 
were brought here, where nobody could speak French, 
and, of course, neither of them could speak any 
English. The boy was white-faced and frightened 
at first, but he soon picked up spirit. They were 
taken in and cared for by one and another — any who 
could afford it. For Farlingford has always bred 
seafaring men ready to give and take.” 

“So we were told yesterday by the rector. We 
had a long talk with him in the morning. A clever 
man, if ” 

Dormer Colville did not complete the remark, but 
broke off with a sigh. He had no doubt seen trouble 
himself. For it is not always the ragged and un- 
kempt who have been sore buffeted by the world, but 
also such as have a clean-washed look almost touch- 
ing sleekness. 

“Yes,” said Clubbe, slowly and conclusively. “So 
you have seen the parson.” 

“Of course,” Colville remarked, cheerfully, after a 
pause; for we cannot always be commiserating the 
unfortunate. “Of course, all this happened before 
his time, and Monsieur de Gemosac does not want 
to learn from hearsay, you understand, but at first 
hand. I fancy he would, for instance, like to know 
when the woman, the — mother died.” 

Clubbe was looking straight in front of him. He 
turned in his disconcerting, monumental way and 
67 


THE LAST HOPE 


looked at his questioner, who had imitated with 
a perfect ingenuousness his own brief pause be- 
fore the word mother. Colville smiled pleasantly 
at him. 

“I tell you frankly, Captain,” he said, “it would 
suit me better if she wasn’t the mother.” 

“I am not here to suit you,” murmured Captain 
Clubbe, without haste or hesitation. 

“Ho. Well let us say for the present that she was 
the mother. We can discuss that another time. 
When did she die?” 

“Seven years after landing here.” 

Colville made a mental calculation and nodded his 
head with satisfaction at the end of it. He lighted 
another cigarette. 

• “I am a business man, Captain,” he said at length. 
“Pair dealing and a clean bond. That is what I 
have been brought up to. Confidence for confidence. 
Before we go any further — ” he paused and seemed 
to think before commiting himself. Perhaps he saw 
that Captain Clubbe did not intend to go much 
further without some quid pro quo. “Before we go 
any further, I think I may take it upon myself to 
let you into the Marquis’s confidence. It is about 
an inheritance, Captain. A great inheritance and — 
well, that young fellow may well be the man. He 
may be born to greater things than a seafaring life, 
Captain.” 


68 


THE STORY OF THE CASTAWAYS 


“I don’t want any marquis to tell me that,” 
answered Clubbe, with bis slow judicial smile. “For 
I’ve brought him up since the cradle. He’s been at 
sea with me in fair weather and foul — and he is not 
the same as us.” 


69 


CHAPTER VII 


ON THE SCENT 

Dormer Colville attached so much importance to 
the Captain’s grave jest that he interpreted it at once 
to Monsieur de Gemosac. 

“Captain Clubbe,” he said, “tells us that he does 
not need to be informed that this Loo Barebone is 
the man we seek. He has long known it.” 

Which was a near enough rendering, perhaps, to 
pass muster in the hearing of two persons imperfectly 
acquainted with the languages so translated. Then, 
turning again to the sailor, he continued : 

“Monsieur de Gemosac would naturally wish to 
know whether there were papers or any other means 
of identification found on the woman or the child ?” 

“There were a few papers. The woman had a 
Roman Catholic Missal in her pocket, and the child 
a small locket with a miniature portrait in it.” 

“Of the Queen Marie Antoinette?” suggested Col- 
ville, quickly. 

“It may well have been. It is many years since I 
saw it. It was faded enough. I remember that it 
70 


ON THE SCENT 


had a fall and would not open afterward. No one 
has seen it for twenty-five years or so.” 

“The locket or the portrait?” inquired Colville, 
with a light laugh, with which to disclaim any sug- 
gestion of a cross-examination. 

“The portrait.” 

“And the locket ?” 

“My wife has it somewhere, I believe.” 

Colville gave an impatient laugh. Eor the peace- 
ful air of Earlingford had failed to temper that spirit 
of energy and enterprise which he had acquired in 
cities — in Paris, most likely. He had no tolerance 
for quiet ways and a slow, sure progress, such as 
countrymen seek, who are so leisurely that the years 
slide past and death surprises them before they have 
done anything in the world but attend to its daily 
demand for a passing effort. 

“Ah !” he cried, “but all that must be looked into 
if we are to do anything for this young fellow. You 
will find the Marquis anxious to be up and doing at 
once. You go so slowly in Farlingford, Captain. 
The world is hurrying on and this chance will be 
gone past before we are ready. Let us get these 
small proofs of identity collected together as soon 
as possible. Let us find that locket. But do not force 
it open. Give it to me as it is. Let us find the 
papers.” 

“There are no papers,” interrupted Captain 

71 


THE LAST HOPE 


Clubbe, with a calm deliberation quite untouched by 
his companion's hurry. 

“No papers?" 

“No; for Frenchman burnt them before my eyes." 

Dormer Colville meditated for a moment in 
silence. Although his manner was quick, he was per- 
haps as deliberate in his choice of a question as was 
Captain Clubbe in answering it. 

“Why did he do that? Did he know who he was? 
Did he ever say anything to you about his former 
life — his childhood — his recollections of France?" 

“He was not a man to say much," answered 
Clubbe, himself no man to repeat much. 

Colville had been trying for some time to study 
the sailor's face, quietly through his cigar smoke. 

“Look here, Captain," he said, after a pause. “Let 
us understand each other. There is a chance, just 
a chance, that we can prove this Loo Barebone to be 
the man we think him, but we must all stand together. 
We must be of one mind and one purpose. We four, 
Monsieur de Gemosac, you, Barebone, and my hum- 
ble self. I fancy — well, I fancy it may prove to 
be worth our while." 

“I am willing to do the best I can for Loo," was 
the reply. 

“And I am willing to do the best I can for Mon- 
sieur de Gemosac, whose heart is set on this affair. 
And," Colville added, with his frank laugh, “let us 
72 


ON THE SCENT 


hope that we may have our reward; for I am a poor 
man, myself, and do not like the prospect of a careful 
old age. I suppose, Captain, that if a man were over- 
burdened with wealth he would scarcely follow a sea- 
faring life, eh?” 

“Then there is money in it?” inquired Clubbe, 
guardedly. 

“Money,” laughed the other. “Yes — there is 

money for all concerned, and to spare.” 

Captain Clubbe had been born and bred among 
a people possessing little wealth and leading a hard 
life, only to come to want in old age. It was natural 
that this consideration should carry weight. He was 
anxious to do his best for the boy who had been 
brought up as his own son. He could think of 
nothing better than to secure him from want for the 
rest of his days. There were many qualities in Loo 
Barebone which he did not understand, for they were 
quite foreign to the qualities held to be virtues in 
Farlingford; such as perseverance and method, a 
careful economy, and a rigid common sense. French- 
man had brought these strange ways into Farling- 
ford when he was himself only a boy of ten, and they 
had survived his own bringing up in some of the 
austerest houses in the town, so vitally as to enable 
him to bequeath them almost unchastened to his son. 

As has been noted, Loo had easily lived down the 
prejudices of his own generation against an un-Eng- 
73 


THE LAST HOPE 


lish gaiety and inconsequence almost amounting to 
emotion. And nothing is, or was in the solider days 
before these trumpet-blowing times, so unwelcome in 
British circles as emotion. 

Frenchman had no doubt prepared the way for his 
son; hut the peculiarities of thought and manner 
which might be allowed to pass in a foreigner would 
be less easily forgiven in Loo, who had Farlingford 
blood in his veins. For his mother had been a 
Clubbe, own cousin, and, as gossips whispered, once 
the sweetheart of Captain Clubbe himself and daugh- 
ter of Seth Clubbe of Maiden’s Grave, one of the 
largest farmers on the Marsh. 

“It cannot be for no particular purpose that the 
boy has been created so different from any about 
him,” Captain Clubbe muttered, reflectively, as he 
thought of Dormer Colville’s words. For he had 
that simple Faith in an Almighty Purpose, without 
which it is to be persumed no wise man will be found 
to do business on blue water. 

“It is strange how a man may be allowed to in- 
herit from a grandfather he has never seen a trick of 
manner, or a face which are not the manner or face 
of his father,” observed Colville, adapting himself, 
as was his habit, to the humour of his companion. 
“There must, as you suggest, be some purpose in it. 
God writes straight on crooked lines, Captain.” 

Thus Dormer Colville found two points of sym- 

74 


ON THE SCENT 


pathy with this skipper of a slow coaster, who had 
never made a mistake at sea nor done an injustice to 
anyone serving under him : a simple faith in the Al- 
mighty Purpose and a very honest respect for money. 
This was the beginning of a sort of alliance 
between four persons of very different character 
which was to influence the whole lives of many 
people. 

They sat on the tarred seat set against the weather- 
beaten wall of “The Black Sailor” until darkness came 
stealing in from the sea with the quiet that broods 
over flat lands and an unpeopled shore. Colville 
had many questions to ask, and many more which 
he withheld till a fitter occasion. But he learnt that 
Frenchman had himself stated his name to be Bare- 
bone when he landed, a forlorn and frightened little 
boy, on this barren shore, and had never departed 
from that asseveration when he came to learn the 
English language and marry an English wife. Cap- 
tain Clubbe told also how Frenchman, for so he con- 
tinued to be called long after his real name had been 
written twice in the parish register, had soon after 
his marriage destroyed the papers carefully pre- 
served by the woman whom he never called mother, 
though she herself claimed that title. 

She had supported herself, it appeared, by her 
needle, and never seemed to want money, which led 
the villagers to conclude that she had some secret 
75 


THE LAST HOPE 


store upon which to draw when in need. She had 
received letters from France, which were carefully 
treasured by her until her death, and for long after- 
ward by Frenchman, who finally burnt all at his mar- 
riage, saying that he was now an Englishman and 
wanted to retain no ties with France. At this time, 
Clubbe remembered, Louis XVIII. was firmly estab- 
lished on the throne of France, the Kestoration — 
known as the Second — having been brought about by 
the Allied Powers with a high hand after the Hun- 
dred Days and the final downfall of Xapoleon. 

Frenchman may well have known that it might 
be worth his while to return to France and seek fort- 
une there; but he never spoke of this knowledge 
nor made reference to the recollections of his child^ 
hood, which cast a cold reserve over his soul and 
steeped it with such a deadly hatred of France and 
all things French, that he desired to sever all memo- 
ries that might link him with his native country or 
awake in the hearts of any children he should beget 
the desire to return thither. 

A year after his marriage his wife died, and thus 
her son, left to the care of a lonely and misanthropic 
father, was brought up a Frenchman after all, and 
lisped his first words in that tongue. 

“He lived long enough to teach him to speak 
French and think like a Frenchman, and then he 
died,” said Captain Clubbe, “ — a young man 
76 


ON THE SCENT 


reckoning by years, but in mind he was an older man 
than I am to-day.” 

“And his secret died with him ?” suggested Dormer 
Colville, looking at the end of his cigar with a queer 
smile. But Captain Clubbe made no answer. 

“One may suppose that he wanted it to die with 
him at all events,” added Colville, tentatively. 

“You are right,” was the reply, a local collo- 
quialism in common use, as a clincher to a closed 
argument or an unwelcome truth. Captain Clubbe 
rose as he spoke and intimated his intention of de- 
parting, by jerking his head sideways at Monsieur 
de Gemosac, who, however, held out his hand with 
a Frenchman’s conscientious desire to follow the 
English custom. 

“I’ll be getting home,” said Clubbe, simply. As 
he spoke he peered across the marsh toward the river, 
and Colville, following the direction of his gaze, saw 
the black silhouette of a large lug-sail against the 
eastern sky, which was softly gray with the foreglow 
of the rising moon. 

“What is that ?” asked Colville. 

“That’s Loo Barebone going up with the sea- 
breeze. He has been down to the rectory. He mostly 
goes there in the evening. There is a creek, you 
know, runs down from Maiden’s Grave to the river.” 

“Ah!” answered Colville, thoughtfully, almost as 
if the creek and the large lug-sail against the sky 
77 


THE LAST HOPE 

explained something which he had not hitherto 
understood. 

“I thought he might have come with you this even- 
ing, ^ he added, after a pause. “For I suppose every- 
body in Earlingford knows why we are here. He 
does not seem very anxious to seek his fortune in 
France.” 

“Ho,” answered Clubbe, lifting his stony face to 
the sky and studying the little clouds that hovered 
overhead awaiting the moon. “Ho — you are right.” 

Then he turned with a jerk of the head and left 
them. The Marquis de Gemosac watched him de- 
part, and made a gesture toward the darkness of the 
night, into which he had vanished, indicative of a 
great despair. 

“But,” he exclaimed, “they are of a placidity — 
these English. There is nothing to be done with 
them, my friend, nothing to be done with such men 
as that. How I understand how it is that they form 
a great nation. It is merely because they stand and 
let you thump them until you are tired, and then 
they proceed to do what they intended to do from 
the first.” 

“That is because we know that he who jumps 
about most actively will be the first to feel fatigue, 
Marquis,” laughed Colville, pleasantly. “But you 
must not judge all England from these eastern peo- 
ple. It is here that you will find the concentrated 
78 


ON THE SCENT 


essence of British tenacity and stolidity — the leaven 
that leavens the whole.” 

“Then it is our misfortune to have to deal with 
these concentrated Engdish — that is all.” 

The Marquis shrugged his shoulders with that 
light despair which is incomprehensible to any but 
men of Latin race. 

“No, Marquis ! there you are wrong,” corrected 
Dormer Colville, with a sudden gravity, “for we 
have in Captain Clubbe the very man we want — 
one of the hardest to find in this chattering world — 
a man who will not say too much. If we can only 
make him say what we want him to say he will not 
ruin all by saying more. It is so much easier to say 
a word too much than a word too little. And remem- 
ber he speaks French as well as English, though, be- 
ing British, he pretends that he cannot.” 

Monsieur de Gemosac turned to peer at his com- 
panion in the darkness. 

“You speak hopefully, my friend,” he said. 
“There is something in your voice ” 

“Is there?” laughed Colville, who seemed elated. 
“There may well be. For that man has been saying 
things in that placid monotone which would have 
taken your breath away had you been able to under- 
stand them. A hundred times I rejoiced that you 
understood no English, for your impatience, Mar- 
quis, might have silenced him as some rare-voiced 
79 


THE LAST HOPE 

bird is silenced by a sudden movement. Yes, Mar- 
quis, there is a locket containing a portrait of Marie 
Antoinette. There are other things also. But there 
is one drawback. The man himself is not anxious 
to come forward. There are reasons, it appears, here 
in Farlingford why he should not seek his fortune 

elsewhere. To-morrow morning ” 

Dormer Colville rose and yawned audibly. It al- 
most appeared that he regretted having permitted 
himself a moment’s enthusiasm on a subject which 
scarcely affected his interests. 

“ To-morrow morning I will see to it.” 


80 


CHAPTER VIII 


THE LITTLE BOY WHO WAS A KING 

The Reverend Septimus Marvin had lost his wife 
five years earlier. It was commonly said that he 
had never been the same man since. Which was un- 
true. Much that is commonly said will, on investi- 
gation, be found to be far from the truth. Septimus 
Marvin had, so to speak, been the same man since in- 
fancy. He had always looked vaguely at the world 
through spectacles ; had always been at a loss among 
his contemporaries — a generation already tainted by 
that shallow spirit of haste which is known to-day as 
modernity — at a loss for a word ; at a loss for a com- 
panion soul. 

He was a scholar and a learned historian. His 
companions were books, and he communed in spirit 
with writers who were dead and gone. 

Had he ever been a different man his circum- 
stances would assuredly have been other. His wife, 
for instance, would in all human probability have 
been alive. His avocation might have been more 
suited to his capabilities. He was not intended for 
81 


THE LAST HOPE 


a country parish, and that practical, human compre- 
hension of the ultimate value of little daily details, 
without which a pastor never yet understood his flock, 
was not vouchsafed to him. 

“Passen takes no account o’ churchyard,” River 
Andrew had said, and neither he nor any other in 
Earlingford could account for the special neglect to 
which was abandoned that particular corner of the 
burial ground where the late Mrs. Marvin reposed 
beneath an early Victorian headstone of singular 
hideousness. 

Mr. Marvin always went round the other way. 

“Seems as he has forgotten her wonderful quick,” 
commented the women of Farlingford. But, per- 
haps, they were wrong. If he had forgotten, he might 
be expected to go round by the south side of the 
church by accident occasionally, especially as it was 
the shorter way from the rectory to the porch. He 
was an absent-minded man, but he always remem- 
bered, as River Andrew himself admitted, to go 
north about. And his wife’s grave was overgrown 
by salted-grass as were the rest. 

Earlingford had accepted him, when his college, 
having no use for such a dreamer elsewhere, gave 
him the living, not only with resignation, but with 
equanimity. This remote parish, cut off from the 
busier mainland by wide heaths and marshes, 
sparsely provided with ill-kept roads, had never 
82 


THE LITTLE BOY WHO WAS A KING 


looked for a bustling activity in its rectors. Their 
forefathers had been content with a gentleman, 
given to sport and the pursuits of a country squire, 
marked on the seventh day by a hearty and robust 
godliness. They would have preferred Parson Mar- 
vin to have handled a boat and carried a gun. But 
he had his good qualities. He left them alone. And 
they are the most independent people in the world. 

When his wife died, his sister, the widow of an 
Indian officer, bustled eastward, from a fashionable 
Welsh watering-place, just to satisfy herself, as she 
explained to her West-country friends, that he 
would not marry his cook before six months elapsed. 
After that period she proposed to wash her hands of 
him. She was accompanied by her only child, 
Miriam, who had just left school. 

Six months later Septimus Marvin was called 
upon to give away his sister to a youthful brother 
officer of her late husband, which ceremony he per- 
formed with a sigh of relief audible in the farthest 
recess of the organ loft. . While the wedding-bells 
were still ringing, the bride, who was not dreamy or 
vague like her brother, gave Septimus to understand 
that he had promised to provide Miriam with a 
home — that he really needed a woman to keep things 
going at the rectory and to watch over the tender 
years of little Sep — and that Miriam’s boxes were 
packed. 


83 


THE LAST HOPE 


Septimus had no recollection of the promise. And 
his sister was quite hurt that he should say such a 
thing as that on her wedding day and spoil every- 
thing. He had no business to make the suggestion 
if he had not intended to carry it out. So the bride 
and bridegroom went away in a shower of good 
wishes and rice to the life of organised idleness, for 
which the gentleman’s education and talents emi- 
nently befitted him, and Miriam returned to Farling- 
ford with Septimus. 

In those days the railway passed no nearer to 
Farlingford than Ipswich, and before the arrival of 
their train at that station Miriam had thoroughly 
elucidated the situation. She had discovered that 
she was not expected at the rectory, and that Septi- 
mus had never offered of his own free will the home 
which he now kindly pressed upon her — two truths 
which the learned historian fondly imagined to he 
for ever locked up in his own heart, which was a kind 
one and the heart of a gentleman. 

Miriam also learned that Septimus was very poor. 
She did not need to he informed that he was help- 
less. Her instinct had told her that long ago. She 
was only nineteen, hut she looked at men and women 
with those discerning grey eyes, in which there 
seemed to lurk a quiet light like the light of stars, 
and saw right through them. She was woman 
enough — despite the apparent inconsequence of the 
84 


THE LITTLE BOY WHO WAS A KING 

school-room, which still lent a vagueness to her 
thoughts and movements — to fall an easy victim to 
the appeal of helplessness. Years, it would appear, 
are of no account in certain feminine instincts. 
Miriam had probably been woman enough at ten 
years of age to fly to the rescue of the helpless. 

She did not live permanently at the rectory, but 
visited her mother from time to time, either in Eng- 
land, or at one of the foreign resorts of idle people. 
But the visits, as years went by, became shorter and 
rarer. At twenty-one Miriam came into a small 
fortune of her own, left by her father in the hands 
of executors, one of whom was that John Turner, 
the Paris banker, who had given Dormer Colville a 
letter of introduction to Septimus Marvin. The 
money was sorely needed at the rectory and Miriam 
drew freely enough on John Turner. 

“You are an extravagant girl,” said that astute 
financier to her, when they met at the house of Mrs. 
St. Pierre Lawrence, at Royan, in France. “I won- 
der what you spend it on. But I don’t trouble my 
head about it, you know. You need not explain, you 
understand. But you can come to me when you want 
advice or help. You will find me — in the back- 
ground. I am a fat old man, in the background. 
Useful enough in my way, perhaps, even to a pretty 
girl with a sound judgment.” 

There were many, who, like Loo Barebone, re- 

85 


THE LAST HOPE 


fleeted that there were other worlds open to Miriam 
Liston. At first she went into those other worlds, 
under the flighty wing of her mother, and looked 
about her there. Captain and Mrs. Duncan belonged 
to the Anglo-French society, which had sprung into 
existence since the downfall of Napoleon I., and was 
in some degree the outcome of the part played by 
Great Britain in the comedy of the Bourbon and 
Orleanist collapse. Captain Duncan had retired 
from the army, changing his career from one of a 
chartered to an unchartered uselessness, and he 
herded with tarnished aristocracy and half-pay fail- 
ures in the smoking-rooms of Continental clubs. 

Miriam returned, after a short experience of this 
world, as to the better part, to Farlingford. At first 
she accepted invitations to some of the country 
houses open to her by her connection with certain 
great families. But after a time she seemed to fall 
under the spell of that quiet life which is still under- 
stood and lived in a few remote places. 

“What can you find to do all day and to think 
about all night at that bleak corner of England ?” 
inquired her friends, themselves restless by day and 
sleepless by night by reason of the heat of their pur- 
suit of that which is called pleasure. 

“If he wants to marry his cook let him do it and 
be done with us,” wrote her mother from the south 
of France. “Come and join us at Biarritz. The 
86 


THE LITTLE BOY WHO WAS A KING 

Prince President will be here this winter. We shall 
be very gay.” . . . “P. S. We shall not ask yon 
to stay with us as we are hard up this quarter ; but 
to share expenses. Mind come.” 

But Miriam remained at Farlingford, and there 
is nothing to be gained by seeking to define her mo- 
tive. There are two arguments against seeking a 
woman’s motive. Firstly: she probably has none. 
Secondly: should she have one she will certainly 
have a counterfeit, which she will dangle before your 
eyes, and you will seize it. 

Dormer Colville might almost be considered to be- 
long to the world of which Captain and Mrs. Duncan 
were such brilliant ornaments. But he did not so 
consider himself. For their world was essentially 
British, savoured here and there by a French count, 
or so, at whose person and title the French aristoc- 
racy of undoubted genuineness looked askance. 
Dormer Colville counted his friends among these 
latter. In fact, he moved in those royalist circles 
who thought that there was little to choose between 
the Napoleonic and the Orleanist regime. He care- 
fully avoided intimacy with Englishmen whose resi- 
dence in foreign parts was continuous and in con- 
stant need of explanation. Indeed, if a man’s life 
needs explanation, he must sooner or later find him- 
self face to face with someone who will not listen 
to him. 


87 


THE LAST HOPE 


Colville, however, knew all about Captain Dun- 
can, and knew what was ignored by many, namely, 
that he was nothing worse than foolish. He knew all 
about Miriam, for he was in the confidence of Mrs. 
St. Pierre Lawrence. He knew that that lady won- 
dered why Miriam preferred Earlingford to the 
high-bred society of her own circle at Royan and in 
Paris. 

He thought he knew why Loo Barebone showed 
so little enterprise. And he was, as Madame de 
Chantonnay had frequently told him, more than half 
a Frenchman in the quickness of his intuitions. He 
picked a flower for his buttonhole from the garden 
of the “Black Sailor,” and set forth the morning 
after his interview with Captain Cluhbe toward the 
rectory. It was a cool July morning, with the sun 
half obscured by a fog-hank driven in from the sea. 
Through the dazzling white of that which is known 
on these coasts as the water-smoke the sky shone a 
cloudless blue. The air was light and thin. It is 
the lightest and thinnest air in England. Dormer 
Colville hummed a song under his breath as he 
walked on the top of the dyke. He was a light- 
hearted man, full of hope and optimism. 

“Am I disturbing your studies?” he asked, with 
his easy laugh, as he came rather suddenly on 
Miriam and little Sep in the turf -shelter at the corner 
of the rectory garden. “You must say so if I am.” 

88 


THE LITTLE BOY WHO WAS A KING 

They had, indeed, their books, and the boy’s face 
wore that abstracted look which comes from a very 
earnest desire not to see the many interesting things 
on earth and sea, which always force themselves upon 
the attention of the young at the wrong time. 
Colville had already secured Sep’s friendship by the 
display of a frank ignorance of natural history only 
equalled by his desire to be taught. 

“We’re doing history,” replied Sep, frankly, 
jumping up and shaking hands. 

“Ah, yes. William the Conqueror, ten hundred 
and sixty-six, and all the rest of it. I know. At 
least I knew once, but I have forgotten.” 

“No. We’re doing French history. Miriam likes 
that best, but I hate it.” 

“French history,” said Colville, thoughtfully. 
“Yes. That is interesting. Miss Liston likes that 
best, does she? Or, perhaps, she thinks that it is 
best for you to know it. Do you know all about 
Louis XYI. and Marie Antoinette ?” 

“Pretty well,” admitted Sep, doubtfully. 

“When I was a little chap like you, I knew many 
people who had seen Louis XYI. and Marie An- 
toinette. That was long, long ago,” he added, turn- 
ing to Miriam to make the admission. “But those 
are not the things that one forgets, are they, Miss 
Liston?” 

“Then I wish Sep could know somebody who 
89 


THE LAST HOPE 


would make kirn remember,” answered Miriam, 
balf closing the book in her hand; for she was very 
quick and had seen Colville’s affable glance take it 
in in passing, as it took in everything within sight. 

“A king, for instance,” he said, slowly. “A king 
of France. Others — prophets and righteous men — 
have desired to see that, Miss Liston.” 

It seemed, however, that he had seen enough to 
know the period which they were studying. 

“I suppose,” he said, after a pause, “that in this 
studious house you talk and think history, and more 
especially French history. It must be very quiet 
and peaceful. Much more restful than acting in it 
as my friend de Gemosac has done all his life, as I 
myself have done in a small way. For France 
takes her history so much more violently than you do 
in England. France is tossed about by it, while Eng- 
land stands and is hammered on the anvil of Time, 
as it were, and remains just the same shape as be- 
fore.” 

He broke off and turned to Sep. 

“Do you know the story of the little boy who was 
a king?” he asked, abruptly. “They put him in 
prison and he escaped. He was carried out in a 
clothes-basket. Funny, is it not? And he escaped 
from his enemies and reached another country, 
where he became a sailor. He grew to be a man and 
he married a woman of that country, and she died, 
90 


THE LITTLE BOY WHO WAS A KING 


leaving him with a little boy. And then he died him- 
self and left the little boy, who was taken care of by 
his English relations, who never knew that he was 
a king. But he was; for his father was a king be- 
fore him, and his grandfathers — far, far back. Back 
to the beginning of the book that Miss Liston holds 
in her hand. The little boy — he was an orphan, you 
see — became a sailor. He never knew that he was 
a king — the hope of his country, of all the old men 
and the wise men in it — the holder of the fate of 
nations. Think of that.” 

The story pleased Sep, who sat with open lips and 
eager eyes, listening to it. 

“Do you think it is an interesting story? What 
do you think is the end of it?” 

“I don’t know,” answered Sep, gravely. 

“Neither do I. No one knows the end of that 
story — yet. But if you were a king — if you were 
that boy — what would you do? Would you go and 
be a king, or would you be afraid ?” 

“No. I should go and be a king. And fight 
battles.” 

“But you would have t© leave everybody. You 
would have to leave your father.” 

“I should not mind that,” answered Sep, brutally. 

“You would leave Miss Liston ?” 

“I should have to,” was the reply, with conviction. 

“Ah, yes,” said Colville, with a grave nod of the 
91 


THE LAST HOPE 


head. “Yes. I suppose you would have to if you 
were anything of a man at all. There would be no 
alternative — for a real man.” 

“Besides,” put in Sep, jumping from side to side 
on his seat with eagerness, “she would make me — 
wouldn’t you, Miriam ?” 

Colville had turned away and was looking north- 
ward toward the creek, known as Maiden’s Grave, 
running through the marshes to the river. A large 
lug-sail broke the flat line of the horizon, though the 
boat to which it belonged was hidden by the raised 
dyke. 

“Would she ?” inquired Colville, absent-mindedly, 
without taking his eyes from the sail which was 
creeping slowly toward them. “Well — you know 
Miss Liston’s character better than I do, Sep. And 
no doubt you are right. And you are not that little 
boy, so it doesn’t matter ; does it ?” 

After a pause he turned and glanced sideways at 
Miriam, who was looking straight in front of her 
with steady eyes and white cheeks. 

They could hear Loo Barebone singing gaily in 
the boat, which was hidden below the level of the 
dyke. And they watched, in a sudden silence, the 
sail pass down the river toward the quay. 


92 


CHAPTER IX 


A MISTAKE 

The tide was ebbing still when Loo Barebone 
loosed his boat, one night, from the grimy steps lead- 
ing from the garden of Maiden’s Grave farm down 
to the creek. It was at the farm-house that Captain 
Clubbe now lived when on shore. He had lived there 
since the death of his brother, two years earlier — that 
grim Clubbe of Maiden’s Grave, whose methods of 
life and agriculture are still quoted on market days 
from Colchester to Beccles. 

The evenings were shorter now, for July was draw- 
ing to a close, and the summer is brief on these coasts. 
The moon was not up yet, but would soon rise. Bare- 
bone hoisted the great lug-sail, that smelt of seaweed 
and tannin. There was a sleepy breeze blowing in 
from the cooler sea, to take the place of that hot and 
shimmering air which had been rising all day from 
the corn-fields. He was quicker in his movements 
than those who usually handled these stiff ropes and 
held the clumsy tiller. Quick — and quiet for once. 
He had been three nights to the rectory, only to find 
93 


THE LAST HOPE 


the rector there, vaguely kind, looking at him with a 
watery eye, through the spectacles which were rarely 
straight upon his nose, with an unasked question on 
his hesitating lips. 

For Septimus Marvin knew that Dormer Colville, 
in the name of the Marquis de Gemosac, had asked 
Loo Barebone to go to France and institute proceed- 
ings there to recover a great heritage, which it seemed 
must be his. And Barebone had laughed and put 
off his reply from day to day for three days. 

Few knew of it in Farlingford, though many must 
have suspected the true explanation of the prolonged 
stay of the two strangers at the “Black Sailor.” Cap- 
tain Clubbe and Septimus Marvin, Dormer Colville 
and Monsieur de Gemosac shared this knowledge, and 
awaited, impatiently enough, an answer which could 
assuredly be only in the affirmative. Clubbe was busy 
enough throughout the day at the old slip-way, where 
“The Last Hope” was under repair — the last ship, it 
appeared likely, that the rotten timbers could support 
or the old, old shipwrights mend. 

Loo Barebone was no less regular in his attendance 
at the river-side, and worked all day, on deck or in 
the rigging, at leisurely sail-making or neat seizing of 
a worn rope. He was gay, and therefore incompre- 
hensible to a slow-thinking, grave-faced race. 

“What do I want with a heritage ?” he asked, care- 
lessly. “I am mate of ‘The Last Hope’ — and that is 
94 


A MISTAKE 


all. Give me time. I have not made up my mind 
yet, but I think it will be Ko.” 

And oddly enough, it was Colville who preached 
patience to his companions in suspense. 

“Give him time,” he said. “There can only he one 
answer to such a proposal. But he is young. It is 
not when we are young that we see the world as it 
really is, hut live in a land of dreams. Give him 
time.” 

The Marquis de Gemosac was impatient, however, 
and was for telling Barebone more than had been 
disclosed to him. 

“There is no knowing,” he cried, “what that ca- 
naille is doing in France.” 

“There is no knowing,” admitted Colville, with his 
air of suppressing a half-developed yawn, “but I think 
we know, all the same — you and I, Marquis. And 
there is no hurry.” 

After three days Loo Barebone had still given no 
answer. As he hoisted the sail and felt for the tiller 
in the dark, he was, perhaps, meditating on this mo- 
mentous reply, or perhaps he had made up his mind 
long before, and would hold to the decision even to 
his own undoing, as men do who are impulsive and 
not strong. The water lapped and gurgled round the 
bows, for the wind was almost ahead, and it was only 
by nursing the heavy boat that he saved the necessity 
of making a tack across the narrow creek. In the 
95 


THE LAST HOPE 


morning he had, as usual, run down into the river and 
to the slip-way, little suspecting that Miriam and Sep 
were just above him behind the dyke, where they had 
sat three days before listening to Dormer Colville’s 
story of the little boy who was a king. To-night he 
ran the boat into the coarse and wiry grass where 
Septimus Marvin’s own dingey lay, half hidden by 
the reeds, and he stumbled ashore clutching at the 
dewy grass as he climbed the side of the dyke. 

He went toward the turf shelter half despondently, 
and then stopped short a few yards away from it. 
For Miriam was there. He thought she was alone, 
and paused to make sure before he spoke. She was 
sitting at the far corner, sheltered from the north 
wind. For Farlingford is like a ship — always con- 
scious of the lee- and the weather-side, and all who 
live there are half sailors in their habits — subservient 
to the wind. 

“At last,” said Loo, with a little vexed laugh. He 
could see her face turned toward him, but her eyes 
were only dark shadows beneath her hair. Her face 
looked white in the darkness. Her answering laugh 
had a soothing note in it. 

“Why — at last ?” she asked. Her voice was frank 
and quietly assured in its friendliness. They were 
old comrades, it seemed, and had never been anything 
else. The best friendship is that which has never 
known a quarrel, although poets and others may sing 
96 


A MISTAKE 


the tenderness of a reconciliation. The friendship 
that has a quarrel and a reconciliation in it is like a 
man with a weak place left in his constitution by a 
past sickness. He may die of something else in the 
end, but the probability is that he must reckon at last 
with that healed sore. The friendship may perish 
from some other cause — a marriage, or success in life, 
one of the two great severers — but that salved quarrel 
is more than likely to recur and kill at last. 

These two had never fallen out. And it was the 
woman who, contrary to custom, fended the quarrel 
now. 

“Oh ! because I have been here three nights in suc- 
cession, I suppose, and did not find you here. I was 
disappointed.” 

“But you found Uncle Septimus in his study. I 
could hear you talking there until quite late.” 

“Oh ! of course I was very glad to see him and 
talk with him. For it is to him that I owe a certain 
half-developed impatience with the uneducated — with 
whom I deal all my life, except for a few hours now 
and then in the study and here in the turf shelter 
with you. I can see — even in the dark — that you 
look grave. Do not do that. It is not worth that.” 

He broke off with his easy laugh, as if to banish 
any suggestion of gravity coming from himself. 

“It is not worth looking grave about. And I am 
sorry if I was rude a minute ago. I had no right, of 
97 


THE LAST HOPE 


course, to assume that you would be here. I suppose 
it was impertinent — was that it ?” 

“I will not quarrel,” she answered, soothingly — 
“if that is what you want.” 

Her voice was oddly placid. It almost seemed to 
suggest that she had come to-night for a certain pur- 
pose; that one subject of conversation alone would 
interest her, and that to all others she must turn a 
deaf ear. 

He came a little nearer, and, leaning against the 
turf wall, looked down at her. He was suddenly 
grave now. The roles were again reversed; for it 
was the woman who was tenacious to one purpose and 
the man who seemed inconsequent, flitting from grave 
to gay, from one thought to another. His apology 
had been made graciously enough, but with a queer 
pride, quite devoid of the sullenness which marks the 
pride of the humbly situated. 

“Ho ; I do not want that,” he answered. “I want a 
little sympathy, that is all ; because I have been edu- 
cated above my station. And I looked for it from 
those who are responsible for that which is nearly 
always a catastrophe. And it is your uncle who edu- 
cated me. He is responsible in the first instance, and, 
of course, I am grateful to him.” 

“He could never have educated you,” put in Mir- 
iam, “if you had not been ready for the education.” 

Barebone laughed carelessly and put aside the 
98 


A MISTAKE 


point. He must, at all events, have learnt humility 
from Septimus Marvin — a quality not natural to his 
temperament. 

“And you are responsible, as well,” he went on, 
“because you have taught me a use for the educa- 
tion.” 

“Indeed !” she said, gently and interrogatively, as 
if at last he had reached the point to which she wished 
to bring him. 

“Yes; the best use to which I could ever put it. 
To talk to you on an equality.” 

He looked hard at her through the darkness, which 
was less intense now ; for the moon was not far below 
the horizon. Her face looked white, and he thought 
that she was breathing quickly. But they had always 
been friends; he remembered that just in time. 

“It is only natural that I should look forward, 
when we are at sea, to coming back here — ” He 
paused and kicked the turf-wall with his heel, as if 
to remind her that she had sat in the same corner 
before and he had leant against the same wall, talk- 
ing to her. “They are good fellows, of course, with 
a hundred fine qualities which I lack, but they do 
not understand half that one may say, or think — even 
the Captain. He is well educated, in his way, but 
it is only the way of a coasting-captain who has 
risen by his merits to the command of a foreign- 
going ship.” - 


99 


THE LAST HOPE 


Miriam gave an impatient little sigh. He had 
veered again from the point. 

“You think that I forget that he is my relative,” 
said Loo, sharply, detecting in his quickness of 
thought a passing resentment. “I do not. I never 
forget that. I am the son of his cousin. I know that, 
and thus related to many in Farlingford. But I have 
never called him cousin, and he has never asked me 
to.” 

“Ho,” said Miriam, with averted eyes, in that other 
voice, which made him turn and look at her, catching 
his breath. 

“Oh !” he said, with a sudden laugh of comprehen- 
sion. “You have heard what, I suppose, is common 
talk in Farlingford. You know what has brought 
these people here — this Monsieur de Gemosac, and 
the other — what is his name ? Dormer Colville. You 
have heard of my magnificent possibilities. And I — 
I had forgotten all about them.” 

He threw out his arms in a gesture of gay con- 
tempt; for even in the dark he could not refrain 
from adding to the meaning of mere words a hun- 
dred-fold by the help of his lean hands and mo- 
bile face. 

“I have heard of it, of course,” she admitted, “from 
several people. But I have heard most from Captain 
Cluhbe. He takes it more seriously than you do. You 
do not know, because he is one of those men who are 
100 


A MISTAKE 


most silent with those to whom they are most at- 
tached. He thinks that it is providential that my 
uncle should have had the desire to educate you, and 
that you should have displayed such capacity to 
learn.” 

“Capacity?” he protested — “say genius! Do not 
let us do things by halves. Genius to learn — yes ; go 
on.” 

“Ah ! you may laugh,” Miriam said, lightly, “but it 
is serious enough. You will find circumstances too 
strong for you. You will have to go to France to 
claim your — heritage.” 

“Hot I, if it means leaving Farlingford for ever 
and going to live among strange people, like the Mar- 
quis de Gemosac, for instance, who gives me the im- 
pression of a thousand petty ceremonies and a million 
futile memories.” 

He turned and lifted his face to the breeze which 
blew from the sea over flat stretches of sand and sea- 
weed — the crispest, most invigorating air in the world 
except that which blows on the Baltic shores. 

“I prefer Farlingford. I am half a Clubbe — and 
the other half! — Heaven knows what that is! The 
offshoot of some forgotten seedling blown away from 
France by a great storm. If my father knew, he 
never said anything. And if he knew, and said noth- 
ing, one may be sure that it was because he was 
ashamed of what he knew. You never saw him, or 
101 


THE LAST HOPE 


you would have known his dread of France, or any- 
thing that was French. He was a man living in a 
dream. His body was here in Farlingford, hut his 
mind was elsewhere — who knows where? And at 
times I feel that, too — that unreality — as if I were 
here, and somewhere else at the same time. But all 
the same, I prefer Farlingford, even if it is a 
dream.” 

The moon had risen at last; a waning half-moon, 
lying low and yellow in the sky, just above the hori- 
zon, casting a feeble light on earth. Loo turned and 
looked at Miriam, who had always met his glance 
with her thoughtful, steady eyes. But now she turned 
away. 

“Farlingford is best, at all events,” he said, with 
an odd conviction. “I am only the grandson of old 
Seth Clubbe, of Maiden’s Grave. I am a Farling- 
ford sailor, and that is all. I am mate of ‘The Last 
Hope’ — at your service.” 

“You are more than that.” 

He made a step nearer to her, looking down at her 
white face, averted from him. For her voice had 
been uncertain — unsteady — as if she were speaking 
against her will. 

“Even if I am only that,” he said, suddenly grave, 
“Farlingford may still be a dream — Farlingford and 
— you.” 

“What do you mean ?” she asked, in a quick, me- 
102 


A MISTAKE 


chanical voice, as if she had reached a desired crisis 
at last and was prepared to act. 

“Oh, I only mean what I have meant always,” he 
answered. “But I have been afraid — afraid. One 
hears, sometimes, of a woman who is generous enough 
to love a man who is a nobody — to think only of love. 
Sometimes — last voyage, when you used to sit where 
you are sitting now — I have thought that it might 
have been my extraordinary good fortune to meet such 
a woman.” 

He waited for some word or sign, but she sat mo- 
tionless. 

“You understand,” he went on, “how contemptible 
must seem their talk of a heritage in France, when 
such a thought is in one’s mind, even if ” 

“Yes,” she interrupted, hastily. “You were quite 
wrong. You were mistaken.” 

“Mistaken in thinking you ” 

“Yes,” she interrupted again. “You are quite mis- 
taken, and I am very sorry, of course, that it should 
have happened.” 

She was singularly collected, and spoke in a matter- 
of-fact voice. Barebone’s eyes gleamed suddenly; 
for she had aroused — perhaps purposely — a pride 
which must have accumulated in his blood through 
countless generations. She struck with no uncertain 
hand. 

“Yes,” he said, slowly ; “it is to be regretted. Is it 
103 


THE LAST HOPE 


because I am the son of a nameless father and only 
the mate of ‘The Last Hope’?” 

“If you were before the mast — ” she answered — 
“if you were a king, it would make no difference. It 
is simply because I do not care for you in that way.” 

“You do not care for me — in that way,” he echoed, 
with a laugh, which made her move as if she were 
shrinking. “Well, there is nothing more to be said 
to that.” 

He looked at her slowly, and then took off his cap 
as if to bid her good-bye. But he forgot to replace 
it, and he went away with his cap in his hand. She 
heard the clink of a chain as he loosed his boat. 


104 


CHAPTEK X 


IN THE ITALIAN HOUSE 

The Abbe Touvent was not a courageous man, and 
the perspiration, induced by the climb from the high- 
road up — that which had once been the ramp — to the 
Chateau of Gemosac, ran cold when he had turned the 
key in the rusty lock of the great gate. It was not a 
dark night, for the moon sailed serenely behind fleecy 
clouds, but the shadows cast by her silvery light might 
harbour any terror. 

It is easy enough to be philosophic at home in a 
chair beside the lamp. Under those circumstances, 
the Abbe had reflected that no one would rob him, 
because he possessed nothing worth stealing. But 
now, out here in the dark, he recalled a hundred in- 
stances of wanton murder duly recorded in the news- 
paper which he shared with three parishioners in 
Gemosac. 

He paused to wipe his brow with a blue cotton 
handkerchief before pushing open the gate, and, be- 
ing alone, was not too proud to peep through the key- 
hole before laying his shoulder against the solid and 
105 


THE LAST HOPE 


weather-beaten oak. He glanced nervously at the 
loopholes in the flanking towers and upward at the 
machicolated battlement overhanging him, as if any 
crumbling peep-hole might harbour gleaming eyes. 
He hurried through the passage beneath the vaulted 
roof without daring to glance to either side, where 
doorways and steps to the towers were rendered more 
fearsome by heavy curtains of ivy. 

The enceinte of the castle of Gemosac is three-sided, 
with four towers jutting out at the corners, from 
which to throw a flanking fire upon any who should 
raise a ladder against the great curtains, built of that 
smooth, white stone which is quarried at Brantome 
and on the banks of the Dordogne. The fourth side 
of the enceinte stands on a solid rock, above the little 
river that loses itself in the flat-lands bordering the 
Gironde, so that it can scarce be called a tributary 
of that wide water. A moss-grown path round the 
walls will give a quick walker ten minutes’ exercise 
to make the round from one tower of the gateway to 
the other. 

Within the enceinte are the remains of the old cas- 
tle, still solid and upright ; erected, it is recorded, by 
the English during their long occupation of this coun- 
try. A more modern chateau, built after the final 
expulsion of the invader, adjoins the ancient struc- 
ture, and in the centre of the vast enclosure, raised 
above the walls, stands a square house, in the Italian 
106 


IX THE ITALIAX HOUSE 

style, built in the time of Marie de Medici, and never 
yet completed. There are, also, gardens and shaded 
walks and vast stables, a chapel, two crypts, and many 
crumbling remains inside the walls, that offered a 
passive resistance to the foe in olden time, and as 
successfully holds its own to-day against the prying 
eye of a democratic curiosity. 

Above the stables, quite close to the gate, half a 
dozen rooms were in the occupation of the Marquis 
de Gemosac; but it was not to these that the Abbe 
Touvent directed his tremulous steps. 

Instead, he went toward the square, isolated house, 
standing in the middle of that which had once been 
the great court, and was now half garden, half hay- 
field. The hay had been cut, and the scent of the 
new stack, standing against the walls of the oldest 
chateau and under its leaking roof, came warm and 
aromatic to mix with the breath of the evening prim- 
rose and rosemary clustering in disorder on the ill- 
defined borders. The grim walls, that had defended 
the Gemosacs against franker enemies in other days, 
served now to hide from the eyes of the villagers the 
fact — which must, however, have been known to them 
— that the Marquis de Gemosac, in gloves, kept this 
garden himself, and had made the hay with no other 
help than that of his old coachman and Marie, that 
capable, brown-faced bonne-a-tout-faire, who is assu- 
redly the best man in France to-day. 

107 


THE LAST HOPE 


In this clear, southern atmosphere the moon has 
twice the strength of that to which we are accustomed 
in mistier lands, and the Abbe looked about him with 
more confidence as he crossed the great court. There 
were frogs in a rain-water tank constructed many 
years ago, when some enterprising foe had been known 
to cut off the water-supply of a besieged chateau, and 
their friendly croak brought a sense of company and 
comfort to the Abbe’s timid soul. 

The door of the Italian house stood open, for the 
interior had never been completed, and only one apart- 
ment, a lofty banqueting-hall, had ever been fur- 
nished. Within the doorway, the Abbe fumbled in 
the pocket of his soutane and rattled a box of matches. 
He carried a parcel in his hand, which he now un- 
folded, and laid out on the lid of a mouldy chest half 
a dozen candles. When he struck a match a flight of 
bats whirred out of the doorway, and the Abbe’s 
breath whistled through his teeth. 

He lighted two candles, and carrying them, alight, 
in one hand — not without dexterity, for candles 
played an important part in his life — he went for- 
ward. The flickering light showed his face to be a 
fat one, kind enough, gleaming now with perspiration 
and fear, but shiny at other times with that Christian 
tolerance which makes men kind to their own failings. 
It was very dark within the house, for all the shutters 
were closed. 


108 


IN THE ITALIAN HOUSE 

The Abbe lighted a third candle and fixed it, with 
a drop of its own wax, on the high mantel of the great 
banqueting-hall. There were four or five candlesticks 
on side-tables, and a candelabra stood in the centre 
of a long table, running the length of the room. In 
a few minutes the Abbe had illuminated the apart- 
ment, which smelt of dust and the days of a dead 
monarchy. Above his head, the hats were describing 
complicated figures against a ceiling which had once 
been painted in the Italian style, to represent a trellis 
roof, with roses and vines entwined. Half a dozen 
portraits of men, in armour and wigs, looked down 
from the walls. One or two of them were rotting 
from their frames, and dangled a despondent corner 
out into the room. 

There were chairs round the table, set as if for a 
phantom banquet amid these mouldering environ- 
ments, and their high carved backs threw fantastic 
shadows on the wall. 

While the Abbe was still employed with the can- 
dles, he heard a heavy step and loud breathing in the 
hall without, where he had carefully left a light. 

“Why did you not wait for me on the hill, Mal- 
honnete?” asked a thick voice, like the voice of a 
man, but the manner was the manner of a woman. 
“I am sure you must have heard me. One hears 
me like a locomotive, now that I have lost my 
slimness.” 


109 


THE LAST HOPE 


She came into the room as she spoke, unwinding a 
number of black, knitted shawls, in which she was 
enveloped. There were so many of them, and of such 
different shape and texture, that some confusion en- 
sued. The Abbe ran to her assistance. 

“But, madame,” he cried, “how can you suspect me 
of such a crime? I came early to make these prepa- 
rations. And as for hearing you — would to Heaven 
I had! For it needs courage to be a Royalist in 
these days — especially in the dark, by one’s self.” 

He seemed to know the shawls, for he disentangled 
them with skill and laid them aside, one by one. 

The Comtesse de Chantonnay breathed a little more 
freely, but no friendly hand could disencumber her 
of the mountains of flesh, which must have weighed 
down any heart less buoyant and courageous. 

“Ah, bah!” she cried, gaily. “Who is afraid? 
What could they do to an old woman? Ah! you 
hold up your hands. That is kind of you. But I 
am no longer young, and there is my Albert — with 
those stupid whiskers. It is unfilial to wear whis- 
kers, and I have told him so. And you — who could 
harm you — a priest? Besides, no one could be a 
priest, and not a Royalist, Abbe!” 

“I know it, madame, and that is why I am one. 
Have we been seen, Madame la Comtesse ? The vil- 
lage was quiet, as you came through ?” 

“Quiet as my poor husband in his grave. Tell me, 
110 


IN THE ITALIAN HOUSE 


Abbe, now, honestly, am I thinner ? I have deprived 
myself of coffee these two days.” 

The Abbe walked gravely round her. It was quite 
an excursion. 

“Who would have you different, madame, from 
what you are?” he temporized. “To be thin is so 
ungenerous. And Albert — where is he ? You have 
not surely come alone ?” 

“Heaven forbid! — and I a widow!” replied Ma- 
dame de Chantonnay, arranging, with a stout hand, 
the priceless lace on her dress. “Albert is coming. 
We brought a lantern, although it is a moon. It is 
better. Besides, it is always done by those who con- 
spire. And Albert had his great cloak, and he fell 
up a step in the courtyard and dropped the lantern, 
and lost it in the long grass. I left him looking for it, 
in the dark. He was not afraid, my brave Albert!” 

“He has the dauntless heart of his mother,” mur- 
mured the Abbe, gracefully, as he ran round the table 
setting the chairs in order. He had already offered 
the largest and strongest to the Comtesse, and it was 
creaking under her now, as she moved to set her dress 
in order. 

“Assuredly,” she admitted, complacently. “Has 
not France produced a Jeanne d’Arc and a Duchesse 
de Berri ? It was not from his father, at all events, 
that he inherited his courage. For he was a poltroon, 
that man. Yes, my dear Abbe, let us be honest, and 
111 


THE LAST HOPE 


look at life as it is. He was a poltroon, and I thought 
I loved him — for two or three days only, however. 
And I was a child then. I was beautiful.” 

“Was?” echoed the Abbe, reproachfully. 

“Silence, wicked one ! And you a priest.” 

“Even an ecclesiastic, madame, may have eyes,” 
he said, darkly, as he snuffed a candle and, subse- 
quently, gave himself a mechanical thump on the 
chest, in the region of the heart. 

“Then they should wear blinkers, like a horse,” 
said madame, severely, as if wearied by an admira- 
tion so universal that it palled. 

At this moment, Albert de Chantonnay entered the 
room. He was enveloped in a long black cloak, which 
he threw off his shoulders and cast over the back of a 
chair, not without an obvious appreciation of its pos- 
sibilities of the picturesque. He looked round the 
room with a mild eye, which refused to lend itself to 
mystery or a martial ruthlessness. 

He was a young man with a very thin neck, and 
the whiskers, of which his mother made complaint, 
were scarcely visible by the light of the Abbe’s can- 
dles. 

“Good !” he said, in a thin tenor voice. “We are in 
time.” 

He came forward to the table, with long, nervous 
strides. He was not exactly impressive, but his man- 
ner gave the assurance of a distinct earnestness of 
112 


IN THE ITALIAN HOUSE 


purpose. The majority of us are unfortunately situ- 
ated toward the world, as regards personal appear- 
ance. Many could pass for great if their physical 
proportions were less mean. There are thousands of 
worthy and virtuous young men who never receive 
their due in social life because they have red hair or 
stand four-feet-six high, or happen to be the victim 
of an inefficient dentist. The world, it would seem, 
does not want virtue or solid worth. It prefers ap- 
pearance to either. Albert de Chantonnay would, for 
instance, have carried twice the weight in Royalist 
councils if his neck had been thicker. 

He nodded to the Abbe. 

“I received your message,” he said, in the curt 
manner of the man whose life is in his hand, or is 
understood, in French theatrical circles, to be thus 
uncomfortably situated. “The letter ?” 

“It is here, Monsieur Albert,” replied the Abbe, 
who was commonplace, and could not see himself as 
he wished others to see him. There was only one 
Abbe Touvent, for morning or afternoon, for church 
or fete, for the chateau or the cottage. There were a 
dozen Albert de Chantonnays, fierce or tender, gay 
or sad, a poet or a soldier — a light persifleur, who had 
passed through the mill, and had emerged hard and 
shining, or a young man of soul, capable of high 
ideals. To-night, he was the politician — the con- 
spirator — quick of eye, curt of speech. 

113 


THE LAST HOPE 

He held out his hand for the letter. 

“You are to read it — as Monsieur le Marquis in- 
structs me — Monsieur Albert,” hazarded the Abbe, 
touching the breast pocket of his soutane, where Mon- 
sieur de Gemosac’s letter lay hidden, “to those as- 
sembled.” 

“But, surely, I am to read it to myself first,” was 
the retort ; “or else how can I give it proper value ?” 


114 


CHAPTER XI 


A BEGINNING 

There may be some who refuse to take seriously 
a person like Albert de Chantonnay because, for- 
sooth, he happened to possess a sense of the 
picturesque. There are, as a matter of fact, millions 
of sensible persons in the British Isles who fail com- 
pletely to understand the average Frenchman. To 
the English comprehension it is, for instance, sur- 
prising that in time of stress — when Paris was be- 
sieged by a German army — a hundred franc-iireur 
corps should spring into existence, who gravely 
decked themselves in sombreros and red waist- 
cloths, and called themselves the “Companions of 
Death,” or some claptrap title of a similar sound. 
Nevertheless, these “Companions of Death” fought 
at Orleans as few have fought since man walked this 
earth, and died as bravely as any in a government 
uniform. Even the stolid German foe forgot, at 
last, to laugh at the sombrero worn in midwinter. 

It is useless to dub a Frenchman unreal and 
theatrical when he gaily carries his unreality and 
115 


THE LAST HOPE 


his perception of the dramatic to the lucarne of the 
guillotine and meets imperturbably the most real 
thing on earth : death. 

Albert de Chantonnay was a good Royalist — a 
better Royalist, as many were in France at this time, 
than the King — and, perhaps, he carried his loyalty 
to the point that is reached by the best form of 
flattery. 

Let it be remembered that when, on the 3d of 
May, 1814, Louis XVIII. was reinstated, not by 
his own influence or exertions, but by the allied 
sovereigns who had overthrown Hapoleon, he began 
at once to issue declarations and decrees as of the 
nineteenth year of his reign, ignoring the Revolu- 
tion and Hapoleon. Did this Bourbon really take 
himself seriously? Did he really expect the world 
to overlook Hapoleon, or did he know as all the world 
knows to-day, that long after the Bourbons have sunk 
into oblivion the name of Kapoleon will continue to 
be a household word ? 

If a situation is thus envisaged by a king, what 
may the wise expect from a Royalist? 

In the absence of the Marquis de Gemosac, Albert 
de Chantonnay was considered to be the leader of 
the party in that quiet corner of south-western 
France which lies north of Bordeaux and south of 
that great dividing river, the Loire. He was, more- 
over, looked upon as representing that younger blood 
116 


A BEGINNING 


of France, to which must be confided the hopes and 
endeavours of the men, now passing away one by 
one, who had fought and suffered for their kings. 

It was confidently whispered throughout this 
pastoral country that August Persons, living in exile 
in England and elsewhere, were in familiar and con- 
fidential correspondence with the Marquis de 
Gemosac, and, in a minor degree, with Albert de 
Chantonnay. For kings, and especially deposed 
kings, may not be choosers, but must take the instru- 
ment that comes to hand. A constitutional monarch 
is, by the way, better placed in this respect, for it 
is his people who push the instrument into his grasp, 
and in the long run the people nearly always read a 
man aright despite the efforts of a cheap press to 
lead them astray. 

“If it were not written in the Marquis’s own 
writing I could not have believed it,” said Albert 
de Chantonnay, speaking aloud his own thoughts. 
He turned the letter this way and that, examining 
first the back of it and then the front. 

“It has not been through the post,” he said to the 
Abbe, who stood respectfully watching his face, 
which, indeed, inspired little confidence, for the chin 
receded in the wrong way — not like the chin of a 
shark, which indicates, not foolishness, but greed of 
gain — and the eyes were large and pale like those 
of a sheep. 


117 


THE LAST HOPE 


“Oh, heaven forbid!” cried the Abbe. “Such a 
letter as that! Where should we all be if it were 
read by the government? And all know that let- 
ters passing through the post to the address of 
such as Monsieur Albert are read in passing — 
by the Prince President himself, as likely as 
not.” 

Albert gave a short derisive laugh, and shrugged 
his shoulders, which made his admiring mother 
throw back her head with a gesture, inviting the Abbe 
to contemplate, with satisfaction, the mother of so 
brave a man. 

“Voila,” she said, “but tell us, my son, what is 
in the letter ?” 

“Not yet,” was the reply. “It is to be read to all 
when they are assembled. In the meantime ” 

He did not finish the sentence in words, but by 
gesture conveyed that the missive, now folded and 
placed in his breast-pocket, was only to be obtained 
bespattered with his life’s blood. And the Abbe 
wiped his clammy brow with some satisfaction that 
it should be thus removed from his own timorous 
custody. 

Albert de Chantonnay was looking expectantly at 
the door, for he had heard footsteps, and now he 
bowed gravely to a very old gentleman, a notary of 
the town, who entered the room with a deep obei- 
sance to the Comtesse. Close on the notary’s heels 
118 


A BEGINNING 


came others. Some were in riding costume, and 
came from a distance. 

One sprightly lady wore evening dress, only 
partially concealed by a cloak. She hurried in with 
a nod for Albert de Chantonnay, and a kiss for the 
Comtesse. Her presence had the immediate effect 
of imparting an air of practical common-sense energy 
to the assembly, which it had hitherto lacked. There 
was nothing of the old regime in this lady, who 
seemed to override etiquette, and cheerfully ignore 
the dramatic side of the proceedings. 

“Is it not wonderful ?” she whispered aloud, after 
the manner of any modern lady at one of those pub- 
lic meetings in which they take too large a part with 
so small a result in these later days. “Is it not won- 
derful?” And her French, though pure enough, 
was full and round — the French of an English 
tongue. “I have had a long letter from Dormer tell- 
ing me all about it. Oh — ” And she broke off, 
silenced by the dark frown of Albert de Chantonnay, 
to which her attention had been forcibly directed by 
his mother. “I have been dining with Madame de 
Bathe,” she went on, irrepressibly, changing the 
subject in obedience to Albert de Chantonnay^ 
frown. “The Vicomtesse bids me make her excuses. 
She feared an indigestion, so will be absent to-night.” 

“Ah !” returned the Comtesse de Chantonnay. 
“It is not that. I happen to know that the Vicom- 
119 


THE LAST HOPE 


tesse de Rathe has the digestion of a schoolboy. It 
is because she has no confidence in Albert. But we 
shall see — we shall see. It is not for the nobility of 
Louis Philippe to — to have a poor digestion.” 

And the Comtesse de Chantonnay made a gesture 
and a meaning grimace which would have been 
alarming enough had her hand and face been less 
dimpled with good nature. 

There were now assembled about a dozen persons, 
and the Abbe was kept in countenance by two others 
of his cloth. There were several ladies ; one of whom 
was young and plain and seemed to watch Albert de 
Chantonnay with a timid awe. Mrs. St. Pierre Law- 
rence, seated next to the Comtesse de Chantonnay, 
was the only lady who made any attempt at gay ap- 
parel, and thus stood rather conspicuous among her 
companions clad in sober and somewhat rusty black. 
All over the west of France such meetings of the 
penniless Royalists were being held at this time, not, 
it has been averred, without the knowledge of the 
Prince President, who has been credited with the 
courage to treat the matter with contempt. About 
no monarch, living or dead, however, have so many 
lies been written, by friend or foe, with good or ill 
intent, as about him, who subsequently carried out 
the astounding feat of climbing to the throne of 
France as Napoleon III. And it seems certain that 
he has been given credit for knowing much of which 
120 


A BEGINNING 

he must have been ignorant to an extent hardly 
credible, even now, in face of subsequent events. 

The Comtesse de Chantonnay was still tossing her 
head, at intervals, at the recollection of the Vicom- 
tesse de Bathe’s indigestion. This was only typical 
of the feelings that divided every camp in France at 
this time — at any time, indeed, since the days of 
Charlemagne — for the French must always quarrel 
among themselves until they are actually on the 
brink of national catastrophe. And even when they 
are fallen into that pit they will quarrel at the bot- 
tom, and bespatter each other with the mud that is 
there. 

“Are we all here ?” asked Albert de Chantonnay, 
standing in an effective attitude at the end of the 
table, with his hand on the back of his chair. He 
counted the number of his fellow-conspirators, and 
then sat down, drawing forward a candelabra. 

“You have been summoned in haste,” he said, “by 
the request of the Marquis de Gemosac to listen to 
the perusal of a letter of importance. It may be of 
the utmost importance — to us — to F ranee— to all the 
world.” 

He drew the letter from his pocket and opened it 
amid a breathless silence. His listeners noted the 
care with which he attended to gesture and de- 
meanour, and accounted it to him for righteousness. 
For they were French. An English audience would 
121 


THE LAST HOPE 

have thought him insincere, and they would have 
been wrong. 

“The letter is dated from a place called Farling- 
ford, in England. I have never heard of it. It is 
nowhere near to Twickenham or Clarement, nor is 
it in Buckinghamshire. The rest of England — no 
one knows.” Albert paused and held up one hand 
for silence. 

“At last,” he said — “at last, my friends, after a 
lifetime of fruitless search, it seems that I have 
found — through the good offices of Dormer Colville 
— not the man we have sought, but his son. We have 
long suspected that Louis XVII. must be dead. 
Madame herself, in her exile at Erohsdorff, has ad- 
mitted to her intimates that she no longer hoped. 
But here in the full vigour of youth — a sailor, strong 
and healthy, living a simple life on shore as at sea — 
I have found a man whose face, whose form, and 
manner would clearly show to the most incredulous 
that he could be no other than the son of Louis XVII. 
A hundred tricks of manner and gesture he has in- 
herited from the father he scarce remembers, from 
the grandfather who perished on the guillotine many 
years before he himself was horn. Xo small proof 
of the man’s sincerity is the fact that only now, after 
long persuasion, has he consented to place himself in 
our hands. I thought of hurrying at once to Erohs- 
dorff to present to the aged Duchess a youth whom 
122 


A BEGINNING 

she cannot fail to recognise as her nephew. But bet- 
ter counsels have prevailed. Dormer Colville, to 
whom we owe so much, has placed us in his farther 
debt for a piece of sage advice. ‘Wait,’ he advises, 
‘until the young man has learned what is expected of 
him, until he has made the personal acquaintance of 
his supporters. Reserve until the end the pre- 
sentation to the Duchesse d’Angouleme, which must 
only be made when all the Royalists in France are 
ready to act with a unanimity which will be abso- 
lute, and an energy which must prove irresistible/ 
“There are more material proofs than a face so 
strongly resembling that of Louis XVI. and Mon- 
sieur d’ Artois, in their early manhood, as to take 
the breath away; than a vivacity inherited from his 
grandmother, together with an independence of spirit 
and impatience of restraint ; than the slight graceful 
form, blue eyes, and fair skin of the little prisoner 
in the Temple. There are dates which go to prove 
that this hoy’s father was rescued from a sinking 
fishing-boat, near Dieppe, a few days after the little 
Dauphin was known to have escaped from the Tem- 
ple, and to have been hurried to the north coast dis- 
guised as a girl. There is evidence, which Monsieur 
Colville is now patiently gathering from these slow- 
speaking people, that the woman who was rescued 
with this child was not his mother. And there are 
a hundred details known to the villagers here which 
123 


THE LAST HOPE 


go to prove what we have always suspected to be the 
case, namely, that Louis XVII. was rescued from 
the Temple by the daring and ingenuity of a devoted 
few who so jealously guarded their secret that they 
frustrated their own object; for they one and all 
must have perished on the guillotine, or at the hands 
of some other assassin, without divulging their knowl- 
edge, and in the confusion and horror of those days 
the little Dauphin was lost to sight. 

“There is a trinket — a locket — containing a minia- 
ture, which I am assured is a portrait of Marie An- 
toinette. This locket is in the possession of Dormer 
Colville, who suggests that we should refrain from 
using violence to open it until this can be done in 
France in the presence of suitable witnesses. A fall 
or some mishap has so crushed the locket that it can 
only be opened by a jeweller provided with suitable 
instruments. It has remained closed for nearly a 
quarter of a century, but a reliable witness in whose 
possession it has been since he, who was undoubtedly 
Louis XVII., died in his arms, remembers the por- 
trait, and has no doubt of its authenticity. I have 
told you enough to make it clear to you that my 
search is at last ended. What we require now is 
money to enable us to bring this King of France to 
his own ; to bring him, in the first place, to my hum- 
ble chateau of Gemosac, where he can lie hidden 
until all arrangements are made. I leave it to 
124 


A BEGINNING 

you, my dear Albert, to collect this preliminary 
sum.” 

De Chantonnay folded the letter and looked at the 
faces surrounding the dimly lighted table. 

Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, who must have known 
the contents of the letter, and, therefore, came pro- 
vided, leaned across the table with a discreet clink 
of jewellery and laid before Albert de Chantonnay a 
note for a thousand francs. 

“I am only an Englishwoman,” she said, simply, 
“but I can help.” 


125 


CHAPTER XII 


THE SECRET OF GEMOSAO 

There is no sentiment so artificial as international 
hatred. In olden days it owed its existence to 
churchmen, and now an irresponsible press foments 
that dormant antagonism. Wherever French and 
English individuals are thrown together by a com- 
mon endeavour, both are surprised at the mutual 
esteem which soon develops into friendship. But as 
nations we are no nearer than we were in the great 
days of Xapoleon. 

Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence was only one-quarter 
French and three-quarters English. Her grand- 
mother had been a St. Pierre; but it was not from 
that lady that she inherited a certain open-handed- 
ness which took her French friends by surprise. 

“It is not that she has the cause at heart,” com- 
mented Madame de Chantonnay, as she walked 
laboriously on Albert’s arm down the ramp of the 
Chateau de Gemosac at the termination of the meet- 
ing. “It is not for that that she throws her note of 
a thousand francs upon the table and promises more 
126 


THE SECRET OF GEMOSAC 


when things are in train. It is because she can re- 
fuse nothing to Dormer Colville. Allez, my son ! I 
have a woman’s heart ! I know l” 

Albert contented himself with a sardonic laugh. 
He was not in the humour to talk of women’s hearts ; 
for Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence’s action had struck a 
sudden note of British realism into the harmony of 
his political fancies. He had talked so much, had 
listened to so much talk from others, that the dream 
of a restored monarchy had at last been raised to 
those far realms* of the barely possible in which the 
Gallic fancy wanders in moments of facile digestion. 

It was sufficient for the emergency that the others 
present at the meeting could explain that one does 
not carry money in one’s pocket in a country lane at 
night. But in their hearts all were conscious of a 
slight feeling of resentment toward Mrs. St. Pierre 
Lawrence ; of a vague sense of disappointment, such 
as a dreamer may experience on being roughly 
awakened. 

The three priests folded their hands with com- 
placency. Poverty, their most cherished possession, 
spoke for itself in their case. The notary blinked 
and fumbled at his lips with yellow fingers in hasty 
thought. He was a Royalist notary because there 
existed in the country of the Deux Sevres a Royalist 
clientele. In France, even a washerwoman must 
hold political views and stand or fall by them. It 
127 


THE LAST HOPE 


was astounding how poor everyone felt at that mo- 
ment, and it rested, as usual, with a woman’s intui- 
tion to grasp the only rope within reach. “The 
vintage,” this lady murmured. The vintage prom- 
ised to be a bad one. [Nothing, assuredly, could be 
undertaken, and no promise made, until the vintage 
was over. 

So the meeting broke up without romance, and the 
conspirators dispersed to their homes, carrying in 
their minds that mutual distrust which is ever 
awakened in human hearts by the chink of gold, 
while the dormant national readiness to detect be- 
trayal by England was suddenly wide awake. 

[Nevertheless, Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence had sup- 
plied the one ingredient necessary to leaven the talk 
of these dreamers into action. Even the notary 
found himself compelled to contribute when Albert 
de Chantonnay asked him outright for * a subscrip- 
tion. And the priests, ably led by the Abbe Touvent, 
acted after the manner of the sons of Levi since olden 
times. They did not give themselves, but they told 
others to give, which is far better. 

In due course the money was sent to England. It 
was the plain truth that the Marquis de Gemosac 
had not sufficient in his pocket to equip Loo Bare- 
bone with the clothes necessary to a seemly appear- 
ance in France; or, indeed, to cover the expense of 
the journey thither. Dormer Colville never had 
128 


THE SECRET OF GEMOSAC 


money to spare. “Heaven shaped me for a rich 
man,” he would say, lightly, whenever the momen- 
tous subject was broached, “but forgot to fill my 
pockets.” 

It was almost the time of the vintage, and the 
country roads were dotted with the shambling figures 
of those knights of industry who seem to spring from 
the hedgerows at harvest-time in any country in the 
world, when the Abbe -Touvent sought out Marie in 
her cottage at the gates of the chateau. 

“ A la cave” answered the lady’s voice. “In the 
cellar — do you not know that it is Monday, and I 
wash ?” 

The Abbe did not repeat his summons on the 
kitchen table with the handle of his stick, but drew 
forward a chair. 

“I know it is very hot, and that I am tired,” he 
shouted, toward the cellar door, which stood open, 
giving egress to a warm smell of soap. 

“Precisely — and does Monsieur l’Abbe want me 
to come up as I am?” 

The suggestion was darkly threatening, and the 
Abbe replied that Marie must take her time, since 
it was washing-day. 

The cottage was built on sloping ground at the 
gate of the chateau, probably of the stones used for 
some earlier fortification. That which Marie called 
the cellar was but half underground, and had an exit 
129 


THE LAST HOPE 


to the garden which grew to the edge of the cliff. It 
was not long before she appeared at the head of the 
stone steps, a square-built woman with a face that 
had been sunburnt long ago by work in the vineyards, 
and eyes looking straight at the world from beneath 
a square and wrinkled forehead. 

“Monsieur l’Abbe,” she said, shortly — a salutation 
and a comment in one ; for it conveyed the fact that 
she saw it was he and perceived that he was in his 
usual health. “It is news from Monsieur, I sup- 
pose, she added, slowly, turning down her sleeves. 

“Yes, the Marquis writes that he is on his way 
to Gemosac and wishes you to prepare the chateau 
for his return.” 

The Abbe waved his hand toward the castle gates 
with an air suggestive of retainers and lackeys, of 
busy stables and a hundred windows lighted after 
dark. His round eyes did not meet the direct glance 
fixed on his face, but wandered from one object to 
another in the room, finally lighting on the great key 
of the chateau gate, which hung on a nail behind the 
door. 

“Then Monsieur le Marquis is coming into resi- 
dence,” said Marie, gravely. 

And by way of reply the Abbe waved his hand a 
second time toward the castle walls. 

“And the worst of it is,” he added, timidly, to this 
silent admission, “that he brings a guest.” 

130 


THE SECRET OF GEMOSAC 


He moistened his fat lips and sat smiling in a fool- 
ish way at the open door; for he was afraid of all 
women, and most afraid of Marie. 

“Ah!” she retorted, shortly. “To sleep in the 
oubliette, one may suppose. For there is no other 
bed in the chateau, as you quite well know, Monsieur 
I Abbe. It is another of your kings no doubt. Oh ! 
you need not hold up your hands — when Monsieur 
Albert reads aloud that letter from Monsieur le Mar- 
quis, in England, without so much as closing the 
door of the banquet hall! It is as well that it was 
no other than I who stood on the stairs outside and 
heard all.” 

“But it is wrong to listen behind doors,” protested 
the Abbe. 

“Ah, bah !” replied this unregenerate sheep of his 
flock. “But do not alarm yourself, Monsieur 1’ Abbe, 
I can keep a quiet tongue. And a political secret — 
what is it ? It is an amusement for the rich — your 
politics — but a vice for the poor. Come, let us go 
to the chateau, while there is still day, and you can 
see for yourself whether we are ready for a guest.” 

While she spoke she hastily completed a toilet, 
which, despite the Abbe’s caution, had the appear- 
ance of incompleteness, and taking the great key 
from behind the door, led the way out into the glare 
of the setting sun. She unlocked the great gate and 
threw her weight against it with quick, firm move- 
131 


THE LAST HOPE 


ments like the movements of a man. Indeed, she 
was a better man than her companion ; of a stronger 
common sense; with lither limbs, and a stouter 
heart; the best man that Erance has latterly pro- 
duced, and, so far as the student of racial degenera- 
tion may foretell, will ever produce again — her 
middle-class woman. 

Built close against the flanking tower on the left 
hand of the courtyard was a low, square house of 
two stories only. The whole ground floor was sta- 
bling, room, and to spare, for half a hundred horses, 
and filled frequently enough, no doubt, in the great 
days of the Great Henry. On the first floor, to which 
three or four staircases gave access, there were 
plenty of apartments; indeed, suites of them. But 
nearly all stood empty, and the row of windows looked 
blank and curtainless across the crumbling garden to 
the Italian house. 

It was one of the many tragedies of that smiling, 
sunny land where only man, it seems, is vile; for 
nature has enclosed within its frontier-lines all the 
varied wealth and beauty of her treasures. 

Marie led the way up the first staircase, which 
was straight and narrow. The carpet, carefully 
rolled and laid aside on the landing, was threadbare 
and colourless. The muslin curtains, folded back 
and pinned together, were darned and yellow with 
frequent washing and the rust of ancient damp. She 
132 


THE SECRET OF GEMOSAC 

opened the door of the first room at the head of the 
stairs. It had once been the apartment of some 
servitor ; now it contained furniture of the gorgeous 
days of Louis XIV., with all the colour gone from 
its tapestry, all the woodwork gray and worm- 
eaten. 

“Hot that one,” said Marie, as the Abbe struggled 
with the lever that fastened the window. “That one 
has not been opened for many years. See ! the glass 
rattles in the frame. It is the other that opens.” 

Without comment the Abbe opened the other win- 
dow and threw back the shutters, from which all the 
paint had peeled away, and let in the scented air. 
Mignonette close at hand — which had bloomed and 
died and cast its seed amid the old walls and falling 
stones since Marie Antoinette had taught the women 
of France to take an interest in their gardens; and 
from the great plains beyond — flat and fat — care- 
fully laid there by the Garonne to give the world its 
finest wines, rose up the subtle scent of vines in 
bloom. 

“The drawing-room,” said Marie, and making a 
mock-curtsey toward the door, which stood open to 
the dim stairs, she made a grand gesture with her 
hand, still red and wrinkled from the wash-tub. 
“Will the King of France be pleased to enter and 
seat himself? There are three chairs, but one of 
them is broken, so his Majesty’s suite must stand.” 

133 


THE LAST HOPE 


With a strident laugh she passed on to the next 
room through folding doors. 

“The principal room,” she announced, with that 
hard irony in her voice, which had, no doubt, pene- 
trated thither from the soul of a mother who had 
played no small part in the Revolution. “The guest- 
chamber, one may say, provided that Monsieur le 
Marquis will sleep on the floor in the drawing-room, 
or in the straw down below in the stable.” 

The Abbe threw open the shutter of this room 
also and stood meekly eyeing Marie with a tolerant 
smile. The room was almost bare of furniture. A 
bed such as peasants sleep on ; a few chairs ; a dress- 
ing-table tottering against the window-breast, and 
modestly screened in one corner, the diminutive 
washing-stand still used in southern France. For 
Gemosac had been sacked and the furniture built up 
into a bonfire when Marie was a little child and the 
Abbe Touvent a fat-faced timorous boy at the Semi- 
nary of Saintes. 

“Beyond is Mademoiselle’s room,” concluded 
Marie, curtly. She looked round her and shrugged 
her shoulders with a grim laugh which made the 
Abbe shrink. They looked at each other in silence, 
the two participants in the secret of Gemosac; for 
Marie’s husband, the third who had access to the 
chateau, did not count. He was a shambling, silent 
man, now working in the vineyard beneath the walls. 

134 


THE SECRET OF GEMOSAC 


He always did what his wife told him, without com- 
ment or enthusiasm, knowing well that he would be 
blamed for doing it badly. 

The Abbe had visited the rooms once before, dur- 
ing a brief passage of the Marquis, soon after his 
wife’s death in Paris. But, as a rule, only Marie 
and Jean had access to the apartment. He looked 
round with an eye always ready with the tear of 
sympathy ; for he was a soft-hearted man. Then he 
looked at Marie again, shamefacedly. But she, di- 
vining his thoughts, shrugged her shoulders. 

“Ah, bah !” she said, “one must take the world as 
it is. And Monsieur le Marquis is only a man. One 
sees that, when he announces his return on washing- 
day and brings a guest. You must write to him, 
that is all, and tell him that with time I can arrange, 
but not in a hurry like this. Where is the furniture 
to come from? A chair or two from the banquet- 
hall ; I can lend a bed which J ean can carry in after 
dark so that no one knows; you have the jug and 
basin you bought when the Bishop came, that you 
must lend — ” She broke off and ran to the window. 
“Good,” she cried, in a despairing voice, “I hear a 
carriage coming up the hill. Run, Monsieur l’Abbe 
— run to the gate and bolt it. Guest or no guest, they 
cannot see the rooms like this. Here, let me past.” 

She pushed him unceremoniously aside at the head 
of the stairs and ran past him. Long concealment of 
135 


THE LAST HOPE 

the deadly poverty within the walls had taught her 
to close the gates behind her whenever she entered, 
but now for greater security, or to gain time, she 
swung the great oaken beam round on its pivot across 
the doors on the inside. Then turning round on 
her heels she watched the bell that hung above her 
head. The Abbe, who had followed her as quickly 
as he could, was naively looking for a peep-hole be- 
tween the timbers of the huge doors. 

A minute later the bell swung slowly and gave a 
single clang which echoed beneath the vaulted roof, 
and in the hollow of the empty towers on either side. 

“Marie, Marie!” cried a gay girlish voice from 
without. “Open at once. It is I.” 

“There,” said Marie, in a whisper. “It is Made- 
moiselle, who has returned from the good Sisters. 
And the story that you told of the fever at Saintes is 
true.” 


136 


CHAPTER XIII 


WITHIN THE GATES 

The great bell hanging inside the gates of Gemosac 
was silent for two days after the return of Juliette de 
Gemosac from her fever-stricken convent school, at 
Saintes. 

But on the third day, soon after nightfall, it rang 
once more, breaking suddenly in on the silence of the 
shadowy courts and gardens, bidding the frogs in the 
tank be still with a soft, clear voice, only compassed 
by the artificers who worked in days when silver was 
little accounted of in the forging of a bell. 

It was soon after eight o’clock, and darkness had 
not long covered the land and sent the workers home. 
There was no moon. Indeed, the summons to the 
gate, coming so soon after nightfall, seemed to sug- 
gest the arrival of a traveller, who had not deemed 
it expedient to pass through the winding streets of 
Gemosac by daylight. 

The castle lies on a height, sufficiently removed 
from the little town to temper the stir of its streets 
to a pleasant and unobtrusive evidence of neighbour- 
137 


THE LAST HOPE 


hood. Had the traveller come in a carriage, the sound 
of its wheels would certainly have been heard; and 
nearer at hand, the tramp of horses on the hollow of 
the old drawbridge, not raised these hundred years, 
must have heralded the summons of the bell. But 
none of these sounds had warned J uliette de Gemosac, 
who sat alone in the little white room upstairs, nor 
Marie and her husband, dumb and worn by the day’s 
toil, who awaited bedtime on a stone seat by the sta- 
ble door. 

Juliette, standing at the open window, heard Jean 
stir himself, and shuffle, in his slippers, toward the 
gate. 

“It is someone who comes on foot,” she heard Marie 
say. “Some beggar — the roads are full of them. See 
that he gets no farther than the gate.” 

She heard Jean draw back the bolts and answer 
gruffly, in a few words, through the interstice of a 
grudging door, what seemed to be inquiries made in 
a voice that was not the voice of a peasant. Marie 
rose and went to the gate. In a few minutes they re- 
turned, and Juliette drew back from the window, for 
they were accompanied by the new-comer, whose boots 
made a sharper, clearer sound on the cobble-stones. 

“Yes,” Juliette heard him explain, “I am an Eng- 
lishman, but I come from Monsieur de Gemosac, for 
all that. And since Mademoiselle is here, I must see 
her. It was by chance that I heard, on the road, that 
138 


WITHIN THE GATES 

there is fever at Saintes, and that she had returned 
home. I was on my way to Saintes to see her and give 
her my news of her father.” 

a But what news ?” asked Marie, and the answer 
was lost as the speakers passed into the doorway, the 
new-comer evidently leading the way, the peasant and 
his wife following without protest, and with that in- 
stinctive obedience to unconscious command which 
will survive all the iconoclasm of a hundred revolu- 
tions. 

There followed a tramping on the stairs and a half- 
suppressed laugh as the new-comer stumbled upward. 
Marie opened the door slowly. 

“It is a gentleman,” she announced, “who does not 
give his name.” 

Juliette de Gemosac was standing at the far side 
of the table, with the lamp throwing its full light upon 
her. She was dressed in white, with a blue ribbon 
at her waist and wrists. Another ribbon of the same 
colour tied back her hair, which was of a bright 
brown, with curls that caught the light in a score 
of tendrils above her ears. No finished coquette 
could have planned a prettier surprise than that 
which awaited Loo Barebone, as he made Marie 
stand aside, and came, hat in hand, into the room. 

He paused for an instant, breathless, before Juli- 
ette, who stood, with a little smile of composed sur- 
prise parting her lips. This child, fresh from the 
130 


THE LAST HOPE 


quiet of a convent-school, was in no wise taken aback 
nor at a loss how to act. She did not speak, hut stood 
with head erect, not ungracious, looking at him with 
clear brown eyes, awaiting his explanation. And 
Loo Barebone, all untaught, who had never spoken to 
a French lady in his life, came forward with an as- 
surance and a readiness which must have lain dormant 
in his blood, awaiting the magic of this moment. 

“Since my name would convey nothing to Made- 
moiselle, he said, with a bow which he had assuredly 
not learnt in Farlingford, “it was useless to mention 
it. But it is at the disposal of Mademoiselle, never- 
theless. It is an English name — Barebone. I am the 
Englishman who has been fortunate enough to engage 
the interest of your father, who journeyed to England 
to find me — and found me.” 

He broke off with a laugh, spreading out his arms 
to show himself, as it were, and ask indulgence. 

“I have a heritage, it appears, in France,” he went 
on, “but know nothing of it, yet. For the weather has 
been bad and our voyage a stormy one. I was to have 
been told during the journey, but we had no time for 
that. And I know no more than you, mademoiselle.” 

Juliette had changed colour, and her cheeks, which 
were usually of a most delicate pink, were suddenly 
quite white. She did not touch upon the knowledge 
to which he referred, but went past it to its object. 

“You do not speak like an Englishman,” she said. 

140 


WITHIN THE GATES 

“For I have seen one. He came to the school at 
Saintes. He was a famous English prelate, and he had 
the manner — well, of a tree. And when he spoke, it 
was what one would expect of a tree, if it suddenly 
had speech. But you — you are not like that.” 

Loo Barebone laughed with an easy gaiety, which 
seemed infectious, though Marie did not join in it, 
but stood scowling in the doorway. 

“Yes,” he said, “you have described them exactly. 
I know a hundred who are like great trees. Many 
are so, but they are kind and still, like trees — the 
English, when you know them, mademoiselle.” 

“They?” she said, with her prettily arched eye- 
brows raised high. 

“We, I mean,” he answered, quickly, taking her 
meaning in a flash. “I almost forgot that I was an 
Englishman. It is my heritage, perhaps, that makes 
me forget — or yourself. It is so easy and natural to 
consider one’s self a Frenchman — and so pleasant.” 

Marie shuffled with her feet and made a movement 
of impatience, as if to remind them that they were 
still far from the business in hand and were merely 
talking of themselves, which is the beginning of all 
things — or may be the beginning of the inevitable 
end. 

“But, I forgot,” said Barebone, at once. “And 
it is getting late. Your father has had a slight mis- 
fortune. He has sprained his ankle. He is on board 
141 


THE LAST HOPE 


my ship, the ship of which I am — I have been — an 
officer, lying at anchor in the river near here, off the 
village of Mortagne. I came from Mortagne at 
your father’s request, with certain messages, for your- 
self, mademoiselle, and for Marie — if madame is 
Marie.” 

“Yes,” replied the grim voice in the doorway. 
“Madame is Marie.” 

Loo had turned toward her. It seemed his happy 
fate to be able to disarm antagonism at the first pass. 
He looked at Marie and laughed ; and slowly, unwill- 
ingly, her grim face relaxed. 

“Well,” he said, “you are not to expect Monsieur 
le Marquis to-night, nor yet, for some time to come. 
Eor he will go on to Bordeaux, where he can obtain 
skilled treatment for his injured ankle, and remain 
there until he can put his foot to the ground. He is 
comfortable enough on hoard the ship, which will pro- 
ceed up the river to-morrow morning to Bordeaux. 
Monsieur le Marquis also told me to set your mind 
at rest on another point. He was to have brought 
with him a guest ” 

Loo paused and bowed to Marie, with a gay 
grace. 

“A humble one. But I am not to come to Gemo- 
sac just now. I am going, instead, with Monsieur 
Dormer Colville, to stay at Boyan with Mrs. St. 
Pierre Lawrence. It is, I hope, a pleasure deferred. 

142 


WITHIN THE GATES 


I cannot, it appears, show myself in Bordeaux at 
present, and I quit the ship to-night. It is some ques- 
tion of myself and my heritage in France, which I 
do not understand.” 

“Is that so?” said Marie. “One can hardly be- 
lieve it.” 

“What do you mean ?” 

“Oh, nothing,” replied Marie, looking at his face 
with a close scrutiny, as if it were familiar to her. 

“And that is all that I had to tell you, Madame 
Marie,” concluded Barebone. 

And, strangely enough, Marie smiled at him as he 
turned away, not unkindly. 

“To you, mademoiselle,” he went on, turning again 
to Juliette, whose hand was at her hair, for she had 
been taken by surprise, “my message is simpler. 
Monsieur, your father, will he glad to have your so- 
ciety at Bordeaux, while he stays there, if that is true 
which the Gironde pilot told him — of fever at Saintes, 
and the hurried dispersal of the schools.” 

“It is true enough, monsieur,” answered Juliette, 
in her low-pitched voice of the south, and with a light 
of anticipation in her eye ; for it was dull enough at 
Gemosac, all alone in this empty chateau. “But how 
am I to reach Bordeaux ?” 

“Your father did not specify the route or method. 
He seemed to leave that to you, mademoiselle. He 
seemed to have an entire faith in your judgment, and 
143 


THE LAST HOPE 


that is why I was so surprised when I saw you. I 
thought — well, I figured to myself that you were 
older, you understand.” 

He broke off with a laugh and a deprecatory gesture 
of the hand, as if he had more in his mind but did 
not want to put it into words. His meaning was clear 
enough in his eyes, but Juliette was fresh from a con- 
vent-school, where they seek earnestly to teach a 
woman not to be a woman. 

“One may be young, and still have understanding, 
monsieur,” she said, with the composed little smile 
on her demure lips, which must only have been the 
composure of complete innocence : almost a monopoly 
of children, though some women move through life 
without losing it. 

“Yes,” answered Loo, looking into her eyes. “So 
it appears. So, how will you go to Bordeaux ? How 
does one go from Gemosac to Bordeaux ?” 

“By carriage to Mortagne, where a boat is always 
to be obtained. It is a short journey, if the tide is 
favourable,” broke in Marie, who was practical be- 
fore she was polite. 

“Then,” said Loo, as quick as thought, “drive back 
with me now to Mortagne. I have left my horse in 
the town, my boat at the pier at Mortagne. It is an 
hour’s drive. In an hour and a half you will be on 
board “The Last Hope,” at anchor in the river. 
There is accommodation on board for both you and 
144 


WITHIN THE GATES 


Madame; for I, alas! leave the ship to-night with 
Monsieur Colville, and thus vacate two cabins.” 

Juliette reflected for a moment, but she did not 
consult, even by a glance, Marie ; who, in truth, ap- 
peared to expect no such confidences, but awaited the 
decision with a grim and grudging servitude which 
was as deeply pressed in upon her soul as was the 
habit of command in the soul of a de Gemosac. 

“Yes,” said Juliette, at length, “that will be best. 
It is, of course, important that my father should 
reach Bordeaux as soon as possible.” 

“He will be there at midday to-morrow, if you 
will come with me now,” answered Loo, and his gay 
eyes said “Come !” as clearly as his lips, though J u- 
liette could not, of course, be expected to read such 
signals. 

The affair was soon settled, and Jean ordered to 
put the horse into the high, old-fashioned carriage 
still in use at the chateau. Eor J uliette de Gemosac 
seemed to be an illustration of the fact, known to 
many much-tried parents, that one is never too young 
to know one’s mind. 

“There is a thunder-storm coming from the sea,” 
was J ean’s only comment. 

There was some delay in starting; for Marie had 
to change her own clothes as well as pack her young 
mistress’s simple trunks. But the time did not seem 
to hang heavily on the hands of the two waiting in the 
145 


THE LAST HOPE 

little drawing-room, and Marie turned an uneasy 
glance toward the open door more than once at the 
sound of their laughter. 

Barebone was riding a horse hired in the village 
of Mortagne, and quitted the chateau first, on foot, 
saying that the carriage must necessarily travel 
quicker than he, as his horse was tired. The night 
was dark, and darkest to the west, where lightning 
danced in and out among heavy clouds over the sea. 

As in all lands that have been torn hither and 
thither by long wars, the peasants of Guienne learnt, 
long ago, the wisdom of dwelling together in closely 
built villages, making a long journey to their fields 
or vineyards every day. In times past, Gemosac had 
been a walled town, dominated, as usual, by the almost 
impregnable castle. 

Barebone rode on, alone, through the deserted vine- 
yards, of which the scent, like that of a vinery in 
colder lands, was heavy and damp. The road runs 
straight, from point to point, and there was no chance 
of missing the way or losing his companions. He was 
more concerned with watching the clouds, which were 
rising in dark towers against the western sky. He 
had noted that others were watching them, also, 
standing at their doors in every street. It was the 
period of thunder and hailstorms — the deadly foe 
of the vine. 

At length Barebone pulled up and waited ; for he 
146 


WITHIN THE GATES 


could hear the sound of wheels behind him, and noted 
that it was not increasing in loudness. 

“Can you not go faster ?” he shouted to Jean, when, 
at length, the carriage approached. 

Jean made no answer, hut lashed his horse and 
pointed upward to the sky with his whip. Barebone 
rode in front to encourage the slower horse. At the 
village of Mortagne he signed to Jean to wait before 
the inn until he had taken his horse to the stable and 
paid for its hire. Then he clambered to the box be- 
side him and they rattled down the long street and 
out into the open road that led across the marshes to 
the port — a few wooden houses and a jetty, running 
out from the shallows to the channel. 

When they reached the jetty, going slowly at the 
last through the heavy dust, the air was still and 
breathless. The rounded clouds still towered above 
them, making the river black with their deep shadows. 
A few lights twinkled across the waters. They were 
the lightships marking the middle bank of the Gi- 
ronde, which is many miles wide at this spot and ren- 
dered dangerous by innumerable sand-hanks. 

“In five minutes it will he upon us,” said Jean. 
“You had better turn back.” 

“Oh, no,” was the reply, with a reassuring laugh. 
“In the country where I come from they do not turn 
back.” 


147 


CHAPTER XIV 


THE LIFTED VEIL 

“ Where is the boatman ?” asked Marie, as she fol- 
lowed Juliette and Barebone along the deserted jetty. 
A light burnt dimly at the end of it and one or two 
boats must have been moored near at hand; for the 
water could be heard lapping under their hows, a se- 
cretive, whispering sound full of mystery. 

“I am the boatman,” replied Loo, over his shoul- 
der. “Are you afraid?” 

“What is the good of being afraid?” asked this 
woman of the world, stopping at the head of the steps 
and peering down into the darkness into which he 
had descended. “What is the good of being afraid 
when one is old and married ? I was afraid enough 
when I was a girl, and pretty, and coquette, like Made- 
moiselle, here. I was afraid enough then, and it was 
worth my while — allez!” 

Barebone made no answer to this dark suggestion 
of a sprightly past. The present darkness and the 
coming storm commanded his full attention. In the 
breathless silence, Juliette and Marie — and behind 
148 


THE LIFTED VEIL 


them, Jean, panting beneath the luggage balanced on 
his shoulder — could hear the wet rope slipping 
through his fingers and, presently, the bump of the 
heavy boat against the timber of the steps. 

This was followed by the gurgle of a rope through 
a well-greased sheave and the square lug, which had 
been the joy of little Sep Marvin, at Farlingford, 
crept up to the truck of the stubby mast. 

“There is no wind for that,” remarked Marie, pes- 
simistically. 

“There will be to spare in a few minutes,” answered 
Barebone, and the monosyllabic Jean gave an acqui- 
escent grunt. 

“Luggage first,” said Barebone, lapsing into the 
curtness of the sea. “Come along. Let us make 
haste.” 

They stumbled on board as best they could, and 
were guided to a safe place, amidships, by Loo, who 
had thrown a spare sail on the bottom of the boat. 

“As low as you can,” he said. “Crouch down. 
Cover yourselves with this. Right over your heads.” 

“But why ?” grumbled Marie. 

“Listen,” was all the answer he gave her. And as 
he spoke, the storm rushed upon them like a train, 
with the roar and whirl of a locomotive. 

Loo jumped aft to the tiller. In the rush of the 
hail, they heard him give a sharp order to Jean, who 
must have had some knowledge of the sea, for he 
149 


THE LAST HOPE 


obeyed at once, and the boat, set free, lurched forward 
with a flap of her sail, which was like the report of a 
cannon. For a moment, all seemed confusion and 
flapping chaos, then came a sense of tenseness, and 
the boat heeled over with a swish, which added a 
hundred-weight of solid water to the beating of the 
hail on the spare sail, beneath which the women 
crouched. 

“What? Did you speak?” shouted Loo, putting 
his face close to the canvas. 

“It is only Marie calling on the saints,” was the 
answer, in Juliette’s laughing voice. 

In a few minutes it was over; and, even at the 
back of the winds, could be heard the retreat of the 
hail as it crashed onward toward the valleys of which 
every slope is a named vineyard, to beat down in a 
few wild moments the result of careful toil and far- 
sighted expenditure; to wipe out that which is 
unique, which no man can replace — the vintage of 
a year. 

When the hail ceased beating on it, Juliette pushed 
back the soaked canvas, which had covered them like 
a roof, and lifted her face to the cooler air. The boat 
was rushing through the water, and close to Juliette’s 
cheek, just above the gunwale, rose a curved wave, 
green and white, and all shimmering with phosphor- 
escence, which seemed to hover like a hawk above its 
prey. 


150 


THE LIFTED VEIL 


The aftermath of the storm was flying overhead in 
riven ribbons of cloud, through which the stars were 
already peeping. To the westward the sky was clear, 
and against the last faint glow of the departed sun 
the lightning ran hither and thither, skipping and 
leaping, without sound or cessation, like fairies danc- 
ing. 

Immediately overhead, the sail creaked and tugged 
at its earings, while the wind sang its high clear song 
round mast and halliards. 

Juliette turned to look at Barebone. He was stand- 
ing, ankle deep, in water, leaning backward to wind- 
ward, in order to give the boat every pound of weight 
he could. The lambent summer-lightning on the west- 
ern horizon illuminated his face fitfully. In that 
moment Juliette saw what is given to few to see and 
realise — though sailors, perforce, lie down to sleep 
knowing it every night — that under Heaven her life 
was wholly and solely in the two hands of a fellow- 
being. She knew it, and saw that Barebone knew it, 
though he never glanced at her. She saw the whites 
of his eyes gleaming as he looked up, from moment to 
moment, to the head of the sail and stooped again 
to peer under the foot of it into the darkness ahead. 
He braced himself, with one foot against the thwart, 
to haul in a few inches of sheet, to which the clumsy 
boat answered immediately. Marie was praying 
aloud, now, and when she opened her eyes the sight 


THE LAST HOPE 


of the tossing figure in the stern of the boat suddenly 
turned her terror into anger. 

“Ah !” she cried, “that Jean is a fool. And he, who 
pretends to have been a fisherman when he was young 
— to let us come to our deaths like this !” 

She lifted her head, and ducked it again, as a sea 
jumped up under the how and rattled into the boat. 

“I see no ship,” she cried. “Let us go back, if we 
can. Hame of God! — we shall be drowned! I see 
no ship, I tell you !” 

“But I do,” answered Barebone, shaking the water 
from his face, for he had no hand to spare. “But I 
do, which is more important. And you are not even 
wet !” 

And he laughed as he brought the boat up into the 
wind for a few seconds, to meet a wild gust. Juliette 
turned in surprise at the sound of his voice. In the 
safe and gentle seclusion of the convent-school no one 
had thought to teach her that death may be faced with 
equanimity by others than the ordained of the Church, 
and that in the storm and stress of life men laugh in 
strange places and at odd times. 

Loo was only thinking of his boat and watching the 
sky for the last of the storm — that smack, as it were, 
in the face — with which the Atlantic ends those black 
squalls that she sends us, not without thunder and 
the curtailed lightning of northern seas. He was 
planning and shaping his course; for the watchers 
152 


THE LIFTED VEIL 


on board “The Last Hope” had already seen him, as 
he could ascertain by a second light, which suddenly 
appeared, swung low, casting a gleam across the surf- 
strewn water, to show him where the ladder hung, 
overside. 

“Tell Monsieur de Gemosac that I have Mademoi- 
selle and her maid here in the boat,” Barebone called 
out to Captain Clubbe, whose large face loomed above 
the lantern he was holding overside, as he made fast 
the rope that had been thrown across his boat and 
lowered the dripping sail. The water was smooth 
enough under the lee of “The Last Hope,” which, 
being deeply laden, lay motionless at her anchor, 
with the stream rustling past her cables. 

“Stand up, mademoiselle,” said Barebone, himself 
balanced on the after-thwart. “Hold on to me, thus, 
and when I let you go, let yourself go.” 

There was no time to protest or to ask questions. 
And Juliette felt herself passed on from one pair of 
strong arms to another, until she was standing on the 
deck under the humming rigging, surrounded by men 
who seemed huge in their gleaming oilskins. 

“This way, mademoiselle,” said one, who was even 
larger than the others, in English, of which she under- 
stood enough to catch his meaning. “I will take you 
to your father. Show a light this way, one of you.” 

His fingers closed round her arm, and he led her, 
unconscious of a strength that almost lifted her from 
153 


THE LAST HOPE 


her feet, toward an open door, where a lamp burnt 
dimly within. It smelt abominably of an untrimmed 
wick, Juliette thought, and the next minute she was 
kissing her father, who lay full length on a locker in 
the little cabin. 

She asked him a hundred questions, and waited for 
few of the answers. Indeed, she supplied most of 
them herself ; for she was very quick and gay. 

“I see,” she cried, “that your foot has been tied up 
by a sailor. He has tried to mend it as if it were a 
broken spar. I suppose that was the Captain who 
brought me to you, and then ran away again, as soon 
as he could. Yes; I have Marie with me. She is 
telling them to be careful with the luggage. I can 
hear her. I am so glad we had a case of fever at the 
school. It was a lay sister, a stupid woman. But 
how lucky that I should be at home just when you 
wanted me !” 

She stood upright again, after deftly loosening the 
bandage round her father’s ankle, and looked at him 
and laughed. 

“Poor, dear old papa,” she said. “One sees that 
you want someone to take care of you. And this 
cabin — oh ! mon Dieu ! how bare and uncomfortable ! 
I suppose men have to go to sea alone because they can 
persuade no woman to go with them.” 

She pounced upon her father again, and arranged 
afresh the cushions behind his back, with a little air 
154 


THE LIFTED VEIL 


of patronage and protection. Her back was turned 
toward the door, when someone came in, but she heard 
the approaching steps and looked quickly round the 
cabin walls. 

“Heavens !” she exclaimed, in a gay whisper. “Ho 
looking-glass. One sees that it is only men who live 
here.” 

And she turned, with smiling eyes and a hand up- 
raised to her disordered hair, to note the new-comer. 
It was Dormer Colville, who laid aside his water- 
proof as he came and greeted her as an old friend. 
He had, indeed, known her since her early childhood, 
and had always succeeded in keeping pace with her, 
even in the rapid changes of her last year at school. 

“Here is an adventure,” he said, shaking hands. 
“But I can see that you have taken no harm, and have 
not even been afraid. Fo*r us, it is a pleasant sur- 
prise.” 

He glanced at her with a smiling approbation, not 
without a delicate suggestion of admiration, perhaps, 
such as he might well permit himself, and she might 
now even consider her due. He was only keeping 
pace. 

“I stayed behind to initiate your maid, who is, of 
course, unused to a ship, and the steward speaks but 
little French. But now they are arranging your cabin 
together.” 

“How delightful !” cried Juliette. “I have never 

155 


THE LAST HOPE 


been on a ship before, you know. And it is all so 
strange and so nice. All those big men, like wet 
ghosts, who said nothing ! I think they are more in- 
teresting than women; perhaps it is because they 
talk less.” 

“Perhaps it is,” admitted Colville, with a sudden 
gravity, similar to that with which she had made the 
suggestion. 

“You should hear the Sisters talk — when they are 
allowed,” she said, confidentially. 

“And whisper when they are not. I can imagine 
it,” laughed Colville. “But now you have left all 
that behind, and have come out into the world — of 
men, one may say. And you have begun at once 
with an adventure.” 

“Yes ! And we are going to Bordeaux, papa and 
I, until his foot is well again. Of course, I was in 
despair when I was first told of it, but now that I see 
him I am no longer anxious. And your messenger 
assured me that it was not serious.” 

She paused to look round the cabin, to make sure 
that they were alone. 

“How strange he is !” she said to both her hearers, 
in confidence, looking from one to the other with a 
quick, bird-like turn of the head and bright eyes. “I 
have never seen anyone like him.” 

“Ho?” said Dormer Colville, encouragingly. 

“He said he was an Englishman ; but, of course, he 
156 


THE LIFTED VEIL 


is not. He is French, and has not the manner of a 
bourgeois or a sailor. He has the manner of an aris- 
tocrat — one would say a Royalist — like Albert de 
Chantonnay, only a thousand times better.” 

“Yes,” said Colville, glancing at Monsieur de Gem- 
osac. 

“More interesting, and so quick and amusing. He 
spoke of a heritage in France, and yet he said he was 
an Englishman. I hope he will secure his heritage.” 

“Yes,” murmured Colville, still looking at Mon- 
sieur de Gemosac. 

“And then, when we were in the boat,” continued 
J uliette, still in confidence to them both, “he changed 
quite suddenly. He was short and sharp. He or- 
dered us to do this and that ; and one did it, somehow, 
without question. Even Marie obeyed him without 
hesitating, although she was half mad with fear. We 
were in danger. I knew that. Anyone must have 
known it. And yet I was not afraid ; I wonder why ? 
And he — he laughed — that was all. Mon Dieu! he 
was brave. I never knew that anyone could be so 
brave !” 

She broke off suddenly, with her finger to her lips ; 
for someone had opened the cabin door. Captain 
Clubbe came in, filling the whole cabin with his bulk, 
and on his heels followed Loo Barebone, his face and 
hair still wet and dripping. 

“Mademoiselle was wondering,” said Dormer Col- 

157 


THE LAST HOPE 


ville, who, it seemed, was quick to step into that si- 
lence which the object of a conversation is apt to 
cause — “Mademoiselle was wondering how it was that 
you escaped shipwreck in the storm.” 

“Ah! because one has a star. Even a poor sailor 
may have a star, mademoiselle. As well as the Prince 
Napoleon, who boasts that he has one of the first 
magnitude, I understand.” 

“You are not a poor sailor, monsieur,” said Juli- 
ette. 

“Then who am I ?” he asked, with a gay laugh, 
spreading out his hands and standing before them, be- 
neath the swinging lamp. 

The Marquis de Gemosac raised himself on one 
elbow. 

• “I will tell you who you are,” he said, in a low, 
quick voice, pointing one hand at Loo. “I will tell 
you.” And his voice rose. 

“You are the grandson of Louis XVI. and Marie 
Antoinette. You are the Last Hope of the French. 
That is your heritage. Juliette ! this is the King of 
France !” 

Juliette turned and looked at him, with all the 
colour gone from her face. Then, instinctively, she 
dropped on one knee, and, before he had understood, 
or could stop her, had raised his hand to her lips. 


158 


CHAPTER XV 


THE TURN OF THE TIDE 

“Tide’s a-turning, sir,” said a voice at the open 
doorway of the cabin, and Captain Clubbe turned his 
impassive face toward Dormer Colville, who looked 
oddly white beneath the light of the lamp. 

Barebone had unceremoniously dragged his hand 
away from the hold of Juliette’s fingers. He made 
a step back and then turned toward the door at 
the sound of his shipmate’s well-known voice. He 
stood staring out into the darkness like one who is 
walking in his sleep. Xo one spoke, and through the 
open doorways no sound came to them but the song 
of the wind through the rigging. 

At last Barebone turned, and there was no sign 
of fear or misgiving in his face. He looked at 
Clubbe, and at no one else, as if the Captain and he 
were alone in the cabin where they had passed so 
many years together in fair weather, to bring out 
that which is evil in a man, and foul, to evolve the 
good. 

“What do you say ?” he asked, in English, and he 

159 


THE LAST HOPE 


must have known that Captain Clubbe understood 
French better than he was ready to admit. 

Clubbe passed his hand slowly across his cheek 
and chin, not in order to gain time, or because he 
had not an answer ready, but because he came of a 
slow-speaking race. His answer had been made ready 
weeks before while he sat on the weather-beaten seat 
set against the wall of “The Black Sailor,” at Far- 
lingford. 

“Tide’s turned,” he answered, simply. “You’d 
better get your oilskins on again and go.” 

“Yes,” said Loo, with a queer laugh. “I fancy I 
shall want my oilskins.” 

The boat which had been sent from Boyan, at the 
order of the pilot, who went ashore there, had fol- 
lowed “The Last Hope” up the river, and was now 
lying under the English ship’s stern awaiting her 
two passengers and the turn of the tide. 

Dormer Colville glanced at the cabin clock. 

“Then,” he said, briskly, “let us be going. It will 
be late enough as it is before we reach my cousin’s 
house.” 

He turned and translated his remark for the bene- 
fit of the Marquis and Juliette, remembering that 
they must needs fail to understand a colloquy in the 
muttered and clipped English of the east coast. He 
was nervously anxious, it would appear, to tide over 
a difficult moment; to give Loo Barebone breathing 
160 


THE TURN OF THE TIDE 

space, and yet to avoid unnecessary question and 
answer. He had not lived forty adventurous years 
in the world without learning that it is the word too 
much which wrecks the majority of human schemes. 

Their preparations had been made beforehand in 
readiness for the return of the tide, without the help 
of which the voyage back to Royan against a con- 
trary wind must necessarily he long and weari- 
some. 

There was nothing to wait for. Captain Clubbe 
was not the man to prolong a farewell or waste his 
words in wishes for the future, knowing, perhaps, 
how vain such must always be. Loo was dazed still 
by the crash of the storm and the tension of the effort 
to bring his boat safely through it. 

The rest had not fully penetrated to his inmost 
mind yet. There had been only time to act, and none 
to think; and when the necessity to act was past; 
when he found himself crouching down under the 
weather gunwale of the French fishing-boat without 
even the necessity of laying hand on sheet or tiller; 
when, at last, he had time to think, he found that 
the ability to do so was no longer his. For fortune, 
when she lifts up or casts us down, usually numbs 
the understanding at the first turn of her wheel, 
sending her victim staggering on his way a mere 
machine, astonishingly alive to the necessity of the 
immediate moment, careful of the next step, but 
161 


THE LAST HOPE 


capable of looking neither forward nor backward 
with an understanding eye. 

The waning moon came up at last, behind a distant 
line of trees on the Charente side, lighting up with a 
silver lining the towering clouds of the storm, which 
was still travelling eastward, leaving in its wake 
battered vines and ruined crops, searing the face of 
the land as with a hot iron. Loo lifted his head and 
looked round him. The owner of the boat was at 
the tiller, while his assistant sat amidships, his elbows 
on his knees, looking ahead with dreamy eyes. Close 
to Barebone, crouching from the wind which blew 
cold from the Atlantic, was Dormer Colville, affably 
silent. If Loo turned to glance at him he looked 
away, but when his back was turned Loo was con- 
scious of watching eyes, full of sympathy, almost 
uncomfortably quick to perceive the inward working 
of another’s mind, and suit his own thereto. 

Thus the boat plunged out toward the sea and the 
flickering lights that mark the channel, tacking right 
across to that spit of land lying between the Gironde 
and the broad Atlantic, where grows a wine without 
match in all the world. Thus Loo Barebone turned 
his back on the ship which had been his home so long 
and set out into a new world ; a new and unknown 
life, with the Marquis de Gemosac’s ringing words 
buzzing in his brain yet; with the warm touch of 
Jlpiette’s lips burning still upon his hand. 

162 


THE TURN OF THE TIDE 

“You are the grandson of Louis XVI. and Marie 
Antoinette. You are the Last Hope of France.” 

And he remembered the lights and shadows on 
J uliette’s hair as he looked down upon her bent head. 

Colville was talking to the “patron” now. He 
knew the coast, it seemed, and, somewhere or other, 
had learnt enough of such matters of local seafaring 
interest as to set the fisherman at his ease and make 
him talk. 

They were arranging where to land, and Colville 
was describing the exact whereabouts of a little jetty 
used for bathing purposes, which ran out from the 
sandy shore, quite near to Mrs. St. Pierre Law- 
rence’s house, in the pine-trees, two miles south of 
Royan. It was no easy matter to find this spot by 
the dim light of a waning moon, and, half-mechani- 
cally, Loo joined in the search, and presently, when 
the jetty was reached, helped to make fast in a 
choppy sea. 

They left the luggage on the jetty and walked 
across the silent sand side by side. 

“There,” said Colville, pointing forward. “It is 
through that opening in the pine-trees. A matter of 
five minutes and we shall be at my cousin’s house.” 

“It is very kind of Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence,” 
answered Barebone, “to — well, to take me up. I sup- 
pose that is the best way to look at it.” 

Colville laughed quietly. 

16 a 


THE LAST HOPE 


“Yes — put it thus if you like,” he said. They 
walked on in silence for a few yards, and then Dor- 
mer Colville slipped his hand within his compan- 
ion’s arm, as was the fashion among men even in 
England in those more expansive days. 

“I think I know how you feel,” he said, suiting 
his step to Barebone’s. “You must feel like a man 
who is set down to a table to play a game of which he 
knows nothing, and on taking up his cards finds that 
he holds a hand all court-cards and trumps — and he 
doesn’t know how to play them.” 

Barebone made no answer. He had yet to un- 
learn Captain Clubbe’s unconscious teaching that a 
man’s feelings are his own concern and no other has 
any interest or right to share in them, except one 
woman, and even she must guess the larger half. 

“But as the game progresses,” went on Colville, 
reassuringly, “you will find out how it is played. 
You will even find that you are a skilled player, and 
then the gambler’s spirit will fire your blood and 
arouse your energies. You will discover what a 
damned good game it is. The great game — Bare- 
bone — the Great Game! And France is the country 
to play it in.” 

He stamped his foot on the soil of France as he 
spoke and laughed quietly to himself. 

“The moment I saw you I knew that you would do. 
No man better fitted to play the game than yourself ; 

164 


THE TURN OF THE TIDE 
for you have wit and quickness/’ went on this friend 
and mentor, with a little pressure on his companion’s 
arm. “But — you will have to put your back into it, 
you know.” 

“What do you mean ?” 

“Well — I noticed at Farlingford a certain reluc- 
tance to begin. It is in the blood, I suppose. There 
is, you know, in the Bourbon blood a certain strain 
of — well, let us say of reluctance to begin. Others 
call it by a different name. One is not a Bourbon 
for nothing, I suppose. And everything — even if it 
be a vice — that serves to emphasise identity is to be 
cultivated. But, as I say, you will have to put your 
back into it later on. At present there will be less 
to do. You will have to play close and hold your 
hand; and follow any lead that is given you by de 
Gemosac, or by my humble self. You will find that 
easy enough, I know. For you have all a French- 
man’s quickness to understand. And I suppose — to 
put it plainly as between men of the world — now 
that you have had time to think it over — you are not 
afraid, Barebone?” 

“Oh, no !” laughed Barebone. “I am not afraid.” 

“One is not a Barebone — or a Bourbon — for noth- 
ing,” observed Colville, in an aside to himself. 
“Gad ! I wish I could say that I should not be afraid 
myself under similar circumstances. My heart was 
in my mouth, I can tell you, in that cabin when de 
165 


THE LAST HOPE 


Gemosac blurted it all out. It came suddenly at 
the end, and — well ! — it rather hit one in the wind. 
And, as I say, one is not a Bourbon for nothing. 
You come into a heritage, eight hundred years old, 
of likes and dislikes; of genius and incapacity, of 
an astounding cleverness, and a preposterous fool- 
ishness without compare in the history of dynasties. 
But that doesn’t matter nowadays. This is a pro- 
gressive age, you know; even the Bourbons cannot 
hold back the advance of the times.” 

"I come into a heritage of friends and of enemies,” 
said Barebone, gaily — “all ready made. That seems 
to me more important.” 

“Gad ! you are right,” exclaimed Colville. “I 
said you would do the moment I saw you step ashore 
at Farlingford. You have gone right to the heart 
of the question at the first bound. It is your friends 
and your enemies that will give you trouble.” 

“More especially my friends,” suggested Loo, with 
a light laugh. 

“Right again,” answered Colville, glancing at him 
sideways beneath the brim of his hat. And there 
was a little pause before he spoke again. 

“You have probably learnt how to deal with your 
enemies at sea,” he said, thoughtfully, at length. 
“Have you ever noticed how an English ship comes 
into a foreign harbour and takes her berth at her 
moorings ? There is nothing more characteristic of 
166 


THE TURN OF THE TIDE 

the nation. And one captain is like another. No 
doubt you have seen Clubbe do it a hundred times. 
He comes in, all sail set, and steers straight for the 
berth he has chosen. And there are always half a 
dozen men in half a dozen small boats who go out 
to meet him. They stand up and wave their arms, 
and point this way and that. They ask a hundred 
questions, and with their hands round their faces, 
shout their advice. And in answer to one and the 
other the Captain looks over the side and says, 4 You 
be damned.’ That will be the way to deal with some 
of your friends and all your enemies alike, Bare- 
bone, if you mean to get on in France. You will 
have to look over the side at the people in small boats 
who are shouting and say, ‘You be damned.’ ” 

They were at the gate of a house now, set down in 
a clearing amid the pine-trees. 

“This is my cousin’s house,” said Dormer Col- 
ville. “It is to be your home for the present. And 
you need not scruple, and she will tell you, to con- 
sider it so. It is not a time to think of obligations, 
you understand, or to consider that you are running 
into anyone’s debt. You may remember that after- 
ward, perhaps, but that is as may be. For the 
present there is no question of obligations. We 
are all in the same boat — all playing the same 
game.” 

And he laughed below his breath as he closed the 

167 


THE LAST HOPE 


gate with caution; for it was late and the house 
seemed to hold none but sleepers. 

“As for my cousin herself,” he continued, as they 
went toward the door, “you will find her easy 
to get on with — a clever woman, and a good-looking 
one. Du reste — it is not in that direction that your 
difficulties will lie. You will find it easy enough to 
get on with the women of the party, I fancy — from 
what I have observed.” 

And again he seemed to be amused. 


168 


CHAPTER XVI 


THE GAMBLERS 

In a sense, politics must always represent the game 
that is most attractive to the careful gambler. For 
one may play at it without having anything to lose. 
It is one of the few games within the reach of the 
adventurous, where no stake need be cast upon the 
table. The gambler who takes up a political career 
plays to win or not to win. He may jump up from 
the gutter and shout that he is the man of the mo- 
ment, without offering any proof of his assertion be- 
yond the loudness of a strident voice. And if no one 
listens to him he loses nothing but his breath. 

And in France the man who shouts loudest is al- 
most certain to have the largest following. In Eng- 
land the same does not yet hold good, but the day 
seems to be approaching when it will. 

In France, ever since the great Revolution, men 
have leapt up from the gutter to grasp the reins of 
power. Some, indeed, have sprung from the gutter 
of a palace, which is no more wholesome, it would 
appear, than the drain of any street, or a ditch that 
carries off the refuse of a cheap Press. 

169 


THE LAST HOPE 


There are certain rooms in the north wing of the 
Louvre, in Paris; rooms having windows facing 
across the Rue de Rivoli toward the Palais Royal, 
where men must have sat in the comfortable leather- 
covered chair of the High Official and laughed at the 
astounding simplicity of the French people. But he 
laughs best who laughs last, and the People will as- 
suredly be amused in a few months, or a few years, 
at the very sudden and very humiliating discomfiture 
of a gentleman falling face-foremost into the street or 
hanging forlornly from a lamp-post at the corner of 
it. For some have quitted these comfortable chairs, 
in these quiet double-windowed rooms overlooking the 
Rue de Rivoli, for no better fate. 

It was in 1850 that a stout gentleman, seated in 
one of these comfortable chairs, succumbed so far 
to the warmth of the palace corridors as to fall 
asleep. He was not in the room of a high official, but 
in the waiting-room attached to it. 

He knew, moreover, that the High Official himself 
was scarcely likely to dismiss a previous visitor or a 
present occupation any the earlier for being impor- 
tuned ; for he was aware of the official's antecedents, 
and knew that a J ack-in-office, who has shouted him- 
self into office, is nearly always careful to be deaf to 
other voices than his own. 

Moreover, Mr. John Turner was never pressed for 
time. 


170 


THE GAMBLERS 


“Yes,” he had been known to say, “I was in Paris 
in ’48. Never missed a meal.” 

Whereas others, with much less at stake than this 
great banker, had omitted not only meals, but their 
night’s rest — night after night — in those stirring 
times. 

John Turner was still asleep when the door lead- 
ing to the Minister’s room was cautiously opened, 
showing an inner darkness such as prevails in an al- 
cove between double doors. The door opened a little 
wider. No doubt the peeping eye had made sure that 
the occupant of the waiting-room was asleep. On the 
threshold stood a man of middle height, who carried 
himself with a certain grace and quiet dignity. He 
was pale almost to sallowness, a broad face with a 
kind mouth and melancholy eyes, without any light 
in them. The melancholy must have been expressed 
rather by the lines of the brows than by the eye itself, 
for this was without life or expression. The eye of a 
man who is either very short-sighted or is engaged in 
looking through that which he actually sees, to some- 
thing he fancies he perceives beyond it. 

His lips smiled, but the smile died beneath a neatly 
waxed moustache and reached no higher on the mask- 
like face. Then he disappeared in the outer darkness 
between the two doors, and the handle made no noise 
in turning. 

In a few minutes an attendant, in a gay uniform, 
171 


THE LAST HOPE 


came in by the same door, without seeking to suppress 
the clatter of his boots on the oak floor. 

“Hola ! monsieur/’ he said, in a loud voice. And 
Mr. John Turner crossed his legs and leant farther 
back in the chair, preparatory to opening his eyes, 
which he did directly on the new-comer’s face, without 
any of that vague flitting hither and thither of glance 
which usually denotes the sleeper surprised. 

The eyes were of a clear blue, and Mr. Turner 
looked five years younger with them open than with 
them shut. But he was immensely stout. 

“Well, my friend,” he said, soothingly; for the 
Minister’s attendant had a truculent ministerial man- 
ner. “Why so much noise ?” 

“The Minister will see you.” 

John Turner yawned and reached for his hat. 

“The Minister is pressed for time.” 

“So was I,” replied the Englishman, who spoke 
perfect French, “when I first sat down here, half an 
hour ago. But even haste will pass in time.” 

He rose, and followed the servant into the inner 
room, where he returned the bow of a little white- 
bearded gentleman seated at a huge desk. 

“Well, sir,” said this gentleman, with the abrupt 
manner which has come to be considered Napoleonic 
on the stage or in the political world to-day. “Your 
business ?” 

The servant had withdrawn, closing the door be- 

172 


THE GAMBLERS 

hind him with an emphasis of the self-accusatory 
sort. 

“I am a banker,” replied John Turner, looking 
with an obese deliberation toward one of the deep 
windows, where, half -concealed by the heavy curtain, 
a third person stood gazing down into the street. 

The Minister ■smiled involuntarily ; forgetting his 
dignity of a two-years’ growth. 

“Oh, you may speak before Monsieur,” he said. 

“But I am behind him,” was the immediate reply. 

The gentleman leaning against the window-breast 
did not accept this somewhat obvious invitation to 
show his face. He must have heard it, however, de- 
spite an absorption which was probably chronic; for 
he made a movement to follow with his glance the 
passage of some object of interest in the street below. 
And the movement seemed to supply John Turner 
w r ith the information he desired. 

“Yes, I am a banker,” he said, more genially. 

The Minister gave a short laugh. 

“Monsieur,” he said, “everyone in Europe knows 
that. Proceed.” 

“And I only meddle in politics when I see the pos- 
sibility of making an honest penny.” 

“Already made — that honest penny — if one may 
believe the gossip — of Europe,” said the Minister. 
“So many pence that it is whispered that you do not 
know what to do with them.” 

173 


THE LAST HOPE 


“It is unfortunate/’ admitted Turner, “that one 
can only dine once a day.” 

The little gentleman in office had more than once 
invited his visitor to be seated, indicating by a gesture 
the chair placed ready for him. After a slow inspec- 
tion of its legs, Mr. John Turner now seated himself. 
It would seem that he, at the sameJime, tacitly ac- 
cepted the invitation to ignore the presence of a third 
person. 

“Since you seem to know all about me,” he said, 
“I will not waste any more of your time, or mine, by 
trying to make you believe that I am eminently re- 
spectable. The business that brought me here, how- 
ever, is of a political nature. A plain man, like my- 
self, only touches politics when he sees his gain 
clearly. There are others who enter that field from 
purer motives, I am told. I have not met them.” 

The Minister smiled on one side of his face, and 
all of it went white. He glanced uncomfortably at 
that third person, whom he had suggested ignoring. 

“And yet,” went on John Turner, very dense or 
greatly daring, “I have lived many years in France, 
Monsieur le Ministre.” 

The Minister frowned at him, and made a quick 
gesture of one hand toward the window. 

“So long,” pursued the Englishman, placidly, “as 
the trains start punctually, and there is not actually 
grape-shot in the streets, and one may count upon one’s 
174 


THE GAMBLERS 


dinner at the hour, one form of government in this 
country seems to me to be as good as another, Mon- 
sieur le Ministre. A Bourbon Monarchy or an Or- 
leans Monarchy, or a Republic, or — well, an Empire, 
Monsieur le Ministre.” 

“Mon Dieu ! have you come here to tell me this ?” 
cried the Minister, impatiently, glancing over his 
shoulder toward the window, and with one hand al- 
ready stretched out toward the little bell standing on 
his desk. 

“Yes,” answered Turner, leaning forward to draw 
the bell out of reach. He nodded his head with a 
friendly smile, and his fat cheeks shook. “Yes, and 
other things, as well. Some of those other matters 
are perhaps even more worthy of your earnest atten- 
tion. It is worth your while to listen. More espe- 
cially, as you are paid for it — by the hour.” 

He laughed inside himself, with a hollow sound, 
and placidly crossed his legs. 

“Yes; I came to tell you, firstly, that the present 
form of government, and, er — any other form which 
may evolve from it ” 

“Oh ! — proceed, monsieur !” exclaimed the Minis- 
ter, hastily, while the man in the recess of the window 
turned and looked over his shoulder at John Turner’s 
profile with a smile, not unkind, on his sphinx-like 
face. 

“ — has the inestimable advantage of my passive 

175 


THE LAST HOPE 


approval. That is why I am here, in fact. I should 
be sorry to see it upset.” 

He broke off, and turned laboriously in his chair 
to look toward the window, as if the gaze of the ex- 
pressionless eyes there had tickled the back of his 
neck like a fly. But by the time the heavy banker had 
got round, the curtain had fallen again in its original 
folds. 

“ — by a serious Royalist plot,” concluded Turner, 
in his thick, deliberate way. 

“So, assuredly, would any patriot or any true friend 
of France,” said the Minister, in his best declamatory 
manner. 

“Um — m; that is out of my depth,” returned the 
Englishman, bluntly. “I paddle about in the shallow 
water at the edge and pick up what I can, you under- 
stand. I am too fat for a Voyant’ bathing-costume, 
and the deep waters beyond, Monsieur le Ministre.” 

The Minister drummed impatiently on his desk 
with his five fingers, and looked at Turner sideways 
beneath his brows. 

“Royalist plots are common enough,” he said, ten- 
tatively, after a pause. 

“Not a Royalist plot with money in it,” was the 
retort. “I daresay an honest politician, like yourself, 
is aware that in France it is always safe to ignore the 
conspirator who has no money, and always dangerous 
to treat with contempt him who jingles a purse. 
176 


THE GAMBLERS 


There is only a certain amount of money in the world, 
Monsieur le Ministre, and we bankers usually know 
where it is. I do not mean the money that the world 
pours into its own stomach. That is always afloat — 
changing hands daily. I mean the great reserves. We 
watch those, you understand. And if one of the great 
reserves, or even one of the smaller reserves, moves, 
we wonder why it is being moved, and we nearly al- 
ways find out.” 

“One supposes,” said the Minister, hazarding an 
opinion for the first time, and he gave it with a side- 
long glance toward the window, “that it is passing 
from the hands of a financier possessing money into 
those of one who has none.” 

“Precisely. And if a financier possessing money 
is persuaded to part with it in such a quarter as you 
suggest, one may conclude that he has good reason to 
anticipate a substantial return for the loan. You, 
who are a brilliant collaborateur in the present gov- 
ernment, should know that, if anyone does, Monsieur 
le Ministre.” 

The Minister glanced toward the window, and then 
gave a good-natured and encouraging laugh, quite un- 
expectedly, just as if he had been told to do so by the 
silent man looking down into the street, who may, in- 
deed, have had time to make a gesture. 

“And,” pursued the hanker, “if a financier possess- 
ing money parts with it — or, to state the case more 
177 


THE LAST HOPE 


particularly, if a financier possessing no money, to 
my certain knowledge, suddenly raises it from no- 
where definite, for the purposes of a Royalist con- 
spiracy, the natural conclusion is that the Royalists 
have got hold of something good.” 

John Turner leant hack in his chair and suppressed 
a yawn. 

“This room is very warm,” he said, producing a 
pocket-handkerchief. Which was tantamount to a re- 
fusal to say more. ’ 

The Minister twisted the end of his moustache in 
reflection. It was at this time the fashion in France 
to wear the moustache waxed. Indeed, men displayed 
thus their political bias to all whom it might concern. 

“There remains nothing,” said the official at length, 
with a gracious smile, “but to ask your terms.” 

Eor he who was afterward Napoleon the Third had 
introduced into French political and social life a 
plain-spoken cynicism which characterises both to this 
day. 

“Easy,” replied Turner. “You will find them 
easy. Firstly, I would ask that your stupid secret 
police keeps its fingers out; secondly, that leniency 
be assured to one person, a client of mine — the woman 
who supplies the money — who is under the influence 
— well, that influence which makes women do nobler 
and more foolish things, monsieur, than men are ca- 
pable of.” 


178 


THE GAMBLERS 


He rose as he spoke, collected his hat and stick, and 
walked slowly to the door. With his hand on the han- 
dle, he paused. 

“You can think about it,” he said, “and let me 
know at your leisure. By the way, there is one more 
point, Monsieur le Ministre. I would ask you to let 
this matter remain a secret, known only to our two 
selves and — the Prince President.” 

And John Turner went out, without so much as a 
glance toward the window. 


179 


CHAPTER XVII 


ON THE PONT ROYAL 

It would appear that John Turner had business 
south of the Seine, though his clients were few in the 
Faubourg St. Germain. For this placid British 
banker was known to be a good hater. His father be- 
fore him, it was said, had had dealings with the Bour- 
bons, while many a great family of the Emigration 
would have lost more than the esteem of their fel- 
lows, in their panic-stricken flight, had it not been 
that one cool-headed and calm man of business stayed 
at his post through the topsy-turvy days of the Terror, 
and did his duty by the clients whom he despised. 

On quitting the Louvre, by the door facing the 
Palais Royal, Turner moved to the left. To say that 
he walked would be to overstate the action of his 
little stout legs, which took so short a stride that his 
progress suggested wheels and someone pushing be- 
hind. He turned to the left again, and ambled under* 
the great arch, to take the path passing behind the 
Tuileries. 

His stoutness was, in a sense, a safeguard in streets 
where the travelling Englishman, easily recognised, 
180 


ON THE PONT ROYAL 


has not always found a welcome. His clothes and his 
walk were studiously French. Indeed, no one, pass- 
ing by with a casual glance, would have turned to look 
a second time at a figure so typical of the Paris 
streets. 

Mr. Turner quitted the enclosure of the Tuileries 
gardens and crossed the quay toward the Pont Royal. 
But he stopped short under the trees by the river wall, 
with a low whistle of surprise. Crossing the bridge, 
toward him, and carrying a carpet-bag of early Vic- 
torian design, was Mr. Septimus Marvin, rector of 
Farlingford, in Suffolk. 

After a moment’s thought, John Turner went to- 
ward the bridge, and stationed himself on the pave- 
ment at the corner. The pavement is narrow, and 
Turner was wide. In order to pass him, Septimus 
Marvin would need to step into the road. This he did, 
without resentment ; with, indeed, a courtly and vague 
inclination of the head toward the human obstruc- 
tion. 

“Look here, Sep,” said Turner, “you are not going 
to pass an old schoolfellow like that.” 

Septimus Marvin lurched onward one or two steps, 
with long loose strides. Then he clutched his carpet- 
bag with both hands and looked back at his interlocu- 
tor, with the scared eyes of a detected criminal. This 
gave place to the habitual gentle smile when, at last, 
the recognition was complete. 

181 


THE LAST HOPE 


“What have you got there V ’ asked Turner, point- 
ing with his stick at the carpet-bag. “A kitten ?” 

“Ho — no,” replied Marvin, looking this way and 
that, to make sure that none could overhear. 

“A Hanteuil — engraved from his own drawing, 
Jack — a real Hanteuil. I have just been to a man I 
know. The print-shop opposite the statue on the Quai 
Voltaire, to have my own opinion verified. I was 
sure of it. He says that I am undoubtedly right. It 
is a genuine Hanteuil — a proof before letters.” 

“Ah! And you have just picked it up cheap? 
Picked up, eh ?” 

“Ho, no; quite the contrary,” Marvin replied, in 
a confidential whisper. 

“Stolen — dear, dear! I am sorry to hear that, 
Septimus.” 

And Septimus Marvin broke into the jerky, spas- 
modic laugh of one who has not laughed for long — 
perhaps for years. 

“Ah, Jack,” he said; “you are still up to a 
joke.” 

“Well, I should hope so. We are quite close to my 
club. Come, and have luncheon, and tell me all about 
it.” 

So the Social and Sporting Club, renowned at that 
day for its matchless cuisine, and for nothing else of 
good repute at all, entertained an angel unawares, and 
was much amused at Septimus Marvin’s appearance, 
182 


ON THE PONT ROYAL 


although the amusement was not apparent. The 
members, it would appear, were gentlemen of that 
good school of old France; which, like many good 
things both French and English, is fast disappearing. 
And with all those faults, which we are so ready to 
perceive in any Frenchman, there is none on earth 
who will conceal from you so effectually the fact that, 
in his heart, he is vastly amused. 

It was with some difficulty that Septimus was per- 
suaded to consign his carpet-bag to the custody of the 
hall-porter. 

“If it w T asn’t a Nanteuil,” he explained in a whis- 
per to his friend, “I should have no hesitation ; for I 
am sure the man is honest and in every way to be 
relied upon. But a Nanteuil — ad vivum — Jack. 
There are none like him. It is priceless.” 

“You used not to be a miser,” said Turner, panting 
on the stairs, when at last the bag was concealed in a 
safe place. “What matter what the value may be, 
so long as you like it ?” 

“Oh! but the value is of great importance,” an- 
swered Septimus, rather sheepishly. 

“Then you have changed a good deal since you and 
I were at Ipswich school together. There, sit down at 
this table. I suppose you are hungry. I hope you 
are. Try and think — there’s a good fellow — and re- 
member that they have the best cook in Paris here. 
Their morals ain’t of the first water, but their cook 
183 


THE LAST HOPE 


is without match. Yes, you have changed a good deal, 
if you think of money .’ 9 

Septimus Marvin had changed colour, at all events, 
in the last few minutes. 

“I have to, Jack ; I have to. That is the truth of it. 
I have come to Paris to sell that Hanteuil. To rea- 
lise, I suppose you would call it in the financial world. 
Pro aris et focis, old friend. I want money for the 
altar and the hearth. It has come to that. I cannot 
ask them in Earlingford for more money, for I know 
they have none. And the church is falling about our 
ears. The house wants painting. It is going the way 
of the church, indeed.” 

a Ah !” said Turner, glancing at him over the hill 
of fare. “So you have to sell an engraving. It goes 
to the heart, I suppose ?” 

Marvin laughed and rubbed his spare hands to- 
gether, with an assumption of cheerfulness in which 
someone less stout and well-to-do than his companion 
might perhaps have perceived that dim minor note of 
pathos, which always rings somewhere in a forced 
laugh. 

“'One has to face it,” he replied. “He cedas malis, 
you know. I suddenly found it was necessary. It 
was forced upon me, in fact. I found that my niece 
was secretly helping to make both ends meet. A gen- 
erous action, made doubly generous by the manner in 
which it was performed.” 


184 


ON THE PONT ROYAL 


“Miriam ?” put in John Turner, who appeared to 
be absorbed in the all-important document before 
him. 

“Yes, Miriam. Do you know her ? Ah ! I forgot. 
You are her guardian and trustee. I sometimes think 
my memory is failing. I found her out quite by 
accident. It must have been going on for quite a 
long time. Heaven will reward her, Turner! One 
cannot doubt it.” 

He absent-mindedly seized two pieces of bread from 
the basket offered to him by a waiter, and began to 
eat as if famished. 

“Steady, man, steady,” exclaimed Turner, leaning 
forward, with a horror-stricken face, to restrain him. 
“Don’t spoil a grand appetite on bread. Gad ! I wish 
I could fall on my food like that. You seem to be 
starving.” 

“I think I forgot to have any breakfast,” said Mar- 
vin, apologetically. 

“I daresay you did !” was the angry retort. “You 
always were a bit of an ass, you know, Sep. But I 
have ordered a tiptop luncheon, and I’ll trouble you 
not to wolf like that.” 

“Well — well, I’m sorry,” said the other, who, even 
in the far-off days at Ipswich school, had always been 
in the clouds, while John Turner moved essentially 
on the earth. 

“And do not sell that Nanteuil to the first bidder,” 

185 


THE LAST HOPE 


went on Turner, with a glance, of which the keen- 
ness was entirely disarmed by the good-natured 
roundness of his huge cheeks. “I know a man who 
will buy it — at a good price, too. Where did you get 
it?” 

“Ah ! that is a long story,” replied Marvin, looking 
dreamily out of the window. “I bought it, years ago, 
at Farlingford. But it is a long story.” 

“Then tell it, slowly. While I eat this sole a la 
Normande. I see you’ve nearly finished yours, and 
I have scarcely begun.” 

It was a vague and disjointed enough story, as re- 
lated by Septimus Marvin. And it was the story of 
Loo Barebone’s father. As it progressed John Turner 
grew redder and redder in the face, while he drank 
glass after glass of Burgundy. 

“A queer story,” he ejaculated, breathlessly. “Go 
on. And you bought this engraving from the man 
himself, before he died? Did he tell you where he 
got it ? It is the portrait of a woman, you say.” 

“Portrait of a woman — yes, yes. But he did not 
know who she was. And I do not know whether I 
gave him enough for it. Do you think I did, Jack ?” 

“I do not know how much you gave him, but I 
have no doubt that it was too much. Where did 
he get it?” 

“He thinks it was brought from Prance by his 
mother, or the woman who was supposed in Farling- 
186 


ON THE PONT ROYAL 


ford to be his mother — together with other papers, 
which he burnt, I believe.” 

“And then he died ?” 

“ Yes — yes. He died — but he left a son.” 

“The devil he did ! Why did you not mention that 
before? Where is the son? Tell me all about him, 
while I see how they’ve served this langue fourree, 
which should be eaten slowly ; though it is too late to 
remind you of that now. Go on. Tell me about the 
son.” 

And before the story of Loo Barebone was half told, 
John Turner laid aside his knife and fork and turned 
his attention to the dissection of this ill-told tale. As 
the story neared its end, he glanced round the room, 
to make sure that none was listening to their conver- 
sation. 

“Dormer Colville,” he repeated. “Does he come 
into it?” 

“He came to Farlingford with the Marquis de 
Gemosac, out of pure good-nature — because the Mar- 
quis could speak but little English. He is a charming 
man. So unselfish and disinterested.” 

“Who ? The Marquis ?” 

“No; Dormer Colville.” 

“Oh, yes !” said John Turner, returning to the cold 
tongue. “Yes; a charming fellow.” 

And he glanced again at his friend, with a 
queer smile. When luncheon was finished, Turner 
187 


THE LAST HOPE 


led the way to a small smoking-room, where they 
would be alone, and sent a messenger to fetch Septi- 
mus Marvin’s bag from downstairs. 

“We will have a look at your precious engraving,” 
he said, “while we smoke a cigar. It is, I suppose, a 
relic of the Great Monarchy, and I may tell you that 
there is rather a small demand just now for relics 
of that period. It would be wiser not to take it into 
the open market. I think my client would give you 
as good a price as any; and I suppose you want to 
get as much as you can for it, now that you have 
made up your mind to the sacrifice ?” 

Marvin suppressed a sigh, and rubbed his hands 
together with that forced jocularity which had 
made his companion turn grave once before. 

“Oh, I mean to drive a hard bargain, I can tell 
you!” was the reply, with an assumption of worldly 
wisdom on a countenance little calculated to wear that 
expression naturally. 

“What did your friend in the print-shop on the 
Quai Voltaire mention as a probable price?” asked 
Turner, carelessly. 

“Well, he said he might be able to sell it for me at 
four thousand francs. I would not hear of his run- 
ning any risk in the matter, however. Such a good 
fellow, he is — so honest.” 

“Yes; he is likely to be that,” said Turner, with 
his broad smile. He was a little sleepy after a heavy 
188 


ON THE PONT ROYAL 


luncheon, and sipped his coffee with a feeling of char- 
ity toward his fellow-men. “You would find lots of 
honest men in the Quai Voltaire, Sep. I will tell 
you what I will do. Give me the print, and I will 
do my best for you. Would ten thousand francs help 
you out of your difficulties ?” 

“I do not remember saying that I was in difficul- 
ties, ” objected the Reverend Septimus, with height- 
ened colour. 

“Don’t you? Memory is bad, is it not? Would 
ten thousand francs paint the rectory, then ?” 

“It would ease my mind and sweeten my sleep at 
night to have half that sum, my friend. With two 
hundred pounds I could face the world aequo animo. ,, 

“I will see what I can do. This is the print, is it ? 
I don’t know much about such things myself, but I 
should put the price down at ten thousand francs.” 

“But the man in the Quai Voltaire ?” 

“Precisely. I know little about prints, but a lot 
about the Quai Voltaire. Who is the lady ? I pre- 
sume it is a portrait ?” 

“It is a portrait, but I cannot identify the original. 
To an expert of that period it should not be impossi- 
ble, however.” Septimus Marvin was all awake now, 
with flushed cheeks and eyes brightened by enthusi- 
asm. “Do you know why? Because her hair is 
dressed in a peculiar way — ‘poufs de sentiment,’ these 
curls are called.. They were only worn for a brief 
189 


THE LAST HOPE 


period. In those days the writings of Jean Jacques 
Kousseau had a certain vogue among the idle classes. 
The women showed their sentiments in the dressing 
of their hair. Very curious — very curious. And 
here, in the hair, half -concealed, is an imitation dove’s 
nest.” 

“The deuce there is!” ejaculated Turner, pulling 
at his cigar. 

“A fashion which ruled for a still briefer period.” 

“I should hope so. Well, roll the thing up, and I 
will do my best for you. I’m less likely to be taken 
in than you are, perhaps. If I sell it, I will send you 
a cheque this evening. It is a beautiful face.” 

“Yes,” agreed Septimus Marvin, with a sharp 
sigh. “It is a beautiful face.” 

And he slowly rolled up his most treasured posses- 
sion, which John Turner tucked under his arm. On 
the Pont Koyal they parted company. 

“By the way,” said John Turner, after they had 
shaken hands, “you never told me what sort of a man 
this young fellow is — this Loo Barebone ?” 

“The dearest fellow in the world,” answered Mar- 
vin, with eyes aglow behind his spectacles. “To me 
he has been as a son ; an elder brother, as it were, to 
little Sep. I was already an elderly man, you 
know, when Sep was born. Too old, perhaps. Who 
knows? Heaven’s way is not always marked very 
clearly.” 


190 


ON THE PONT ROYAL 


He nodded vaguely and went away a few paces. 
Then he remembered something and came hack. 

“I don’t know if I ought to speak of such a thing. 
But I quite hoped, at one time, that Miriam might 
one day recognise his goodness of heart.” 

“What?” interrupted Turner. “The mate of a 
coasting schooner !” 

“He is more than that, my friend,” answered Sep- 
timus Marvin, nodding his head slowly, so that the 
sun flashed on his spectacles in such a manner as to 
make Turner blink. Then he turned away again and 
crossed the bridge, leaving the English banker at the 
corner of it, still blinking. 


191 


CHAPTER XVIII 


THE CITY THAT SOON FORGETS 

There are in humble life some families which 
settle their domestic differences on the doorstep, 
while the neighbours, gathered hastily by the commo- 
tion, tiptoe behind each other to watch the fun. In 
the European congerie France represents this loud- 
voiced household, and Paris — Paris, the city that 
soon forgets — is the doorstep whereon they wrangle. 

The bones of contention may he pitched far and 
wide by the chances and changes of exile, hut the con- 
tending dogs bark and yap in Paris. At this time 
there lived, sometimes in Italy, sometimes at Erohs- 
dorf, a jovial young gentleman, fond of sport and 
society, cultivating the tastes and enjoying the easy 
existence of a country-gentleman of princely rank — 
the Count de Chambord. Son of that Duchesse de 
Berri who tried to play a great part and failed, 
he was married to an Italian princess and had no 
children. He was, therefore, the last of the Bour- 
bons, and passed in Europe as such. But he did not 
care. Perhaps his was the philosophy of the indo- 
192 


THE CITY THAT SOON FORGETS 

lent which saith that someone must be last and why 
not I? 

Nevertheless, there ran in his veins some ener- 
getic blood. On his father’s side he was descended 
from sixty-six kings of France. From his mother 
he inherited a relationship to many makers of 
history. For the Duchesse de Bern’s grandmother 
was the sister of Marie Antoinette. Her mother was 
aunt to that Empress of the French, Marie Louise, 
who was a notable exception to the rule that “ Bon 
sang ne pent mentir .” Her father was a king of 
Sicily and Naples. She was a Bourbon married to a 
Bourbon. When she was nineteen she gave birth to 
a daughter, who died next day. In a year she had 
a son who died in twenty hours. Two years later her 
husband died in her arms, assassinated, in a back 
room of the Opera House in Paris. 

Seven months after her husband’s death she gave 
birth to the Comte de Chambord, the last of the old 
Bourbons. She was active, energetic and of bound- 
less courage. She made a famous journey through 
La Vendee on horseback to rally the Royalists. She 
urged her father-in-law, Charles X., to resist the 
revolution. She was the best Royalist of them all. 
And her son was the Comte de Chambord, who 
could have been a king if he had not been a philoso- 
pher or a coward. 

He was waiting till France called him with one 
193 


THE LAST HOPE 


voice. As if Prance had ever called for anything 
with one voice! 

Amid the babel there rang out not a few voices 
for the younger branch of the Royal line — the Or- 
leans. Louis Philippe — king for eighteen years — 
was still alive, living in exile at Claremont. Two 
years earlier, in the rush of the revolution of 1848, 
he had effected his escape to Hewhaven. The Or- 
leans always seek a refuge in England, and always 
turn and abuse that country when they can go else- 
where in safety. And England is not one penny the 
worse for their abuse, and no man or country was 
ever yet one penny the better for their friendship. 

Louis Philippe had been called to the throne by 
the people of France. His reign of eighteen years 
was marked by one great deed. He threw open the 
Palace of Versailles — which was not his — to the 
public. And then the people who called him in 
hooted him out. His life had been attempted many 
times. All the other kings hated him and refused to 
let their daughters marry his sons. He and his sons 
were waiting at Claremont while the talkers in Paris 
talked their loudest. 

There was a third bone of contention — the Im- 
perial line. At this time the champions of this 
morsel were at the summit ; for a Bonaparte was rid- 
ing on the top of the revolutionary scrimmage. 

By the death of the great Hapoleon’s only child, 
194 


THE CITY THAT SOON FORGETS 


the second son of his third brother became the recog- 
nised claimant to the Imperial crown. 

For France has long ceased to look to the eldest 
son as the rightful heir. There is, in fact, a curse 
on the first-born of France. Napoleon’s son, the 
King of Rome, died in exile, an Austrian. The Due 
de Bordeaux, born eight years after him, never wore 
the crown, and died in exile, childless. The Comte 
de Paris, born also at the Tuileries, was exiled when 
he was ten years old, and died in England. All 
these, of one generation. And of the next, the Prince 
Imperial, hurried out of France in 1870, perished 
on the Veldt. The King of Rome lies in his tomb 
at Vienna, the Due de Bordeaux at Goritz, the Comte 
de Paris at Weybridge, the Prince Imperial at Farn- 
borough. These are the heirs of France, born in the 
Palace of the Tuileries. How are they cast upon the 
waters of the world ! And where the palace of the 
Tuileries once stood the pigeons now call to each 
other beneath the trees, while, near at hand, lolls on 
the public seat he whom France has always with 
her, the “ vaurien ” — the worth-nothing. 

So passes the glory of the world. It is not a good 
thing to be born in a palace, nor to live in one. 

It was in the Rue Lafayette that John Turner 
had his office, and when he emerged from it into that 
long street on the evening of the 25th of August, 
1850, he ran against, or he was rather run against 
.195 


THE LAST HOPE 


by, the newsboy who shrieked as he pattered along 
in lamentable boots and waved a sheet in the face of 
the passer: “The King is dead! The King is dead!” 

And Paris — the city that soon forgets — smiled 
and asked what King? 

Louise Philippe was dead in England, at the age 
of seventy-seven, the bad son of a bad father, another 
of those adventurers whose happy hunting-ground 
always has been, always will be, Prance. 

John Turner, like many who are slow in move- 
ment, was quick in thought. He perceived at once 
that the death of Louis Philippe left the field open 
to the next adventurer; for he left behind him no 
son of his own mettle. 

Turner went back to his office, where the pen with 
which he had signed a cheque for four hundred 
pounds, payable to the Reverend Septimus Marvin, 
was still wet; where, at the bottom of the largest 
safe, the portrait of an unknown lady of the period 
of Louis XVI. lay concealed. He wrote out a tele- 
gram to Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, addressed to her 
at her villa near Royan, and then proceeded to his 
dinner with the grave face of the careful critic. 

The next morning he received the answer, at his 
breakfast-table, in the apartment he had long occu- 
pied in the Avenue d’Antin. But he did not open 
the envelope. He had telegraphed to Mrs. St. Pierre 
Lawrence, asking if it would be convenient for her 
106 


THE CITY THAT SOON FORGETS 


to put him up for a few days. And he suspected that 
it would not. 

“When I am gone,” he said to his well-trained 
servant, “put that into an envelope and send it after 
me to the Villa Cordouan, Roy an. Pack my port- 
manteau for a week.” 

Thus John Turner set out southward to join a 
party of those Royalists whom his father before him 
had learnt to despise. And in a manner he was pre- 
armed; for he knew that he would not he welcome. 
It was in those days a long journey; for the railway 
was laid no farther than Tours, from whence the 
traveller must needs post to La Rochelle, and there 
take a boat to Royan — that shallow harbour at the 
mouth of the Gironde. 

“Must have a change — of cooking,” he explained 
to Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence. “Doctor says I am 
getting too stout.” 

He shook her deliberately by the hand without 
appearing to notice her blank looks. 

“So I came south and shall finish up at Biarritz, 
which they say is going to be fashionable. I hope it 
is not inconvenient for you to give me a bed — a solid 
one — for a night or two.” 

“Oh, no!” answered Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, 
who had charming manners, and was one of those 
fortunate persons who are never at a loss. “Did you 
not receive my telegram?” 

107 


THE LAST HOPE 


“Telling me you were counting the hours till my 
arrival ?’ ’ 

“Well,” admitted Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, 
wisely reflecting that he would ultimately see the 
telegram, “hardly so fervent as that ” 

“Good Lord !” interrupted Turner, looking be- 
hind her toward the veranda, which was cool and 
shady, where two men were seated near a table bear- 
ing coffee-cups. “Who is that ?” 

“Which?” asked Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, with- 
out turning to follow the direction of his glance. 

“Oh ! one is Dormer Colville, I see that. But the 
other — gad !” 

“Why do you say gad ?” asked the lady, with sur- 
prise. 

“Where did he get that face from?” was the 
reply. 

Turner took off his hat and mopped his brow ; for 
it was very hot and the August sun was setting over 
a copper sea. 

“Where we all get our faces from, I suppose!” 
answered Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, with her easy 
laugh. She was always mistress of the situation. 
“The heavenly warehouse, one supposes. His name 
is Barebone. He is a friend of Dormer’s.” 

“Any friend of Dormer Colville’s commands my 
interest.” 

Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence glanced quickly at her 
108 


THE CITY THAT SOON FORGETS 


companion beneath the shade of her lace-trimmed 
parasol. 

“What do you mean by that ?” she asked, in a voice 
suddenly hard and resentful. 

“That he chooses his friends well,” returned the 
banker, with his guileless smile. His face was 
bovine, and in the heat of summer apt to be shiny. 
No one would attribute an inner meaning to a stout 
person thus outwardly brilliant. Mrs. St. Pierre 
Lawrence appeared to be mollified, and turned 
toward the house with a gesture inviting him to walk 
with her. 

“I will be frank with you,” she said. “I tele- 
graphed to tell you that the Villa Cordouan is for 
the moment unfortunately filled with guests.” 

“What matter ? I will go to the hotel. In fact, 
I told the driver of my carriage to wait for further 
orders. I half feared that at this time of year, 
you know, house would be full. I’ll just shake 
hands with Colville and then be off. You will 
let me come in after dinner, perhaps. You and 
I must have a talk about money, you will re- 
member.” 

There was no time to answer ; for Dormer Colville, 
perceiving their approach, was already hurrying 
down the steps of the veranda to meet them. He 
laughed as he came, for J ohn Turner’s bulk made him 
a laughing matter in the eyes of most men, and his 
199 


THE LAST HOPE 

good humour seemed to invite them to frank amuse- 
ment. 

The greeting was, therefore, jovial enough on both 
sides, and after being introduced to Loo Barebone, 
Mr. Turner took his leave without farther defining 
his intentions for the evening. 

“I do not think it matters much,” Mrs. St. Pierre 
Lawrence said to her two guests, when he had left. 
“And he may not come after all.” 

Her self-confidence sufficiently convinced Loo, 
who was always ready to leave something to chance. 
But Dormer Colville shook his head. 

It thus came about that sundry persons of title and 
importance who had been invited to come to the Villa 
Cordouan after dinner for a little music found the 
English hanker complacently installed in the largest 
chair, with a shirt-front evading the constraint of an 
abnormal waistcoat, and a sleepy chin drooping sur- 
reptitiously toward it. 

“He is my banker from Paris,” whispered Mrs. 
St. Pierre Lawrence to one and another. “He knows 
nothing, and so far as I am aware, is no politician — 
merely a banker, you understand. Leave him alone 
and he will go to sleep.” 

During the three weeks which Loo Barebone had 
spent very pleasantly at the Villa Cordouan, Mrs. 
St. Pierre Lawrence had provided music and light 
refreshment for her friends on several occasions. 

200 


THE CITY THAT SOON FORGETS 

And each evening the drawing-room, which was not 
a small one, had been filled to overflowing. Friends 
brought their friends and introduced them to the 
hostess, who in turn presented them to Barebone. 
Some came from a distance, driving from Saintes or 
La Rochelle or Pons. Others had taken houses for 
the bathing-season at Royan itself. 

“He never makes a mistake,” said the hostess to 
Dormer Colville, behind her fan, a hundred times, 
following with her shrewd eyes the gay and easy 
movements of Loo, who seemed to be taught by 
some instinct to suit his manner to his inter- 
locutor. 

To-night there was more music and less conver- 
sation. 

“Play him to sleep,” Dormer Colville had said to 
his cousin. And at length Turner succumbed to 
the soft effect of a sonata. He even snored in the 
shade of a palm; and the gaiety of the proceedings 
in no way suffered. 

It was only Colville who seemed uneasy and 
always urged any who were talking earnestly to 
keep out of earshot of the sleeping Englishman. 
Once or twice he took Barebone by the arm and led 
him to the other end of the room ; for he was always 
the centre of the liveliest group, and led the laughter 
there. 

“Oh! but he is charming, my dear,” more than 
201 


THE LAST HOPE 


one guest whispered to Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, 
as they took their departure. 

“He will do — he will do,” the men said with a new 
light of hope in their grave faces. 

Nearly all had gone when John Turner at length 
woke up. Indeed, Colville threw a book upon the 
floor to disturb his placid sleep. 

“I will come round to-morrow,” he said, bidding 
his hostess good-night. “I have some papers for you 
to sign since you are determined to sell your rentes 
and leave the money idle at your bank.” 

“Yes. I am quite determined,” she answered, 
gaily ; for she was before her time inasmuch as she 
was what is known in these days of degenerate speech 
as cock-sure. 

And when John Turner, carrying a bundle of 
papers, presented himself at the Villa Cordouan next 
morning he found Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence sitting 
alone in the veranda. 

“Dormer and his friend have left me to my own 
devices. They have gone away,” she mentioned, 
casually, in the course of conversation. 

“Suddenly?” 

“Oh, no,” she answered, carelessly, and wrote her 
name in a clear firm hand on the document before 
her. And John Turner looked dense. 


202 


CHAPTER XIX 


IN THE BREACH 

The Marquis de Gemosac was sitting at the open 
window of the little drawing-room in the only habi- 
table part of the chateau. From his position he 
looked across the courtyard toward the garden where 
stiff cypress-trees stood sentry among the mignonette 
and the roses, now in the full glory of their autumn 
bloom. 

Beyond the garden, the rough outline of the walls 
cut a straight line across the distant plains, which 
melted away into the haze of the marsh-lands by the 
banks of the Gironde far to the westward. 

The Marquis had dined. They dined early in 
those days in France, and coffee was still served 
after the evening meal. The sun was declining 
toward the sea in a clear copper-coloured sky, but a 
fresh breeze was blowing in from the estuary to 
temper the heat of the later rays. 

The Marquis was beating time with one finger, and 
within the room, to an impromptu accompaniment 
invented by Juliette, Barebone was singing: 

203 


THE LAST HOPE 


C’est le Hasard, 

Qui, t6t ou tard, 

Ici-bas nous seconde ; 

Car, 

D’un bout du monde 
A 1’ autre bout, 

Le Hasard seul fait tout. 

He broke off with a laugh in which Juliette's low 
voice joined. 

“That is splendid, mademoiselle,” he cried, and 
the Marquis clapped his thin hands together. 

Un tel qu’on vantait 
Par hasard 6tait 
D’origine assez mince ; 

Par hasard il plut 

Par hasard il fut 

Baron, ministre et prince : 

C’est le Hasard, 

Qui, tdt ou tard 
Ici-bas nous seconde ; 

Car, 

D’un bout du monde 
A l’autre bout 
Le Hasard seul fait tout. 

“There — that is all I know. It is the only song 
I sing.” 

“But there are other verses,” said Juliette, resting 
her hands on the keys of the wheezy spinet which 
must have been a hundred years old. “What are they 
about ?” 


204 


IN THE BREACH 


“1 do not know, mademoiselle,” he answered, look- 
ing down at her. “I think it is a love-song.” 

She had pinned some mignonette, strong scented 
as autumn mignonette is, in the front of her muslin 
dress, and the heavy heads had dragged the stems to 
one side. She put the flowers in order, slowly, and 
then bent her head to enjoy the scent of them. 

“It scarcely sounds like one,” she said, in a low 
and inquiring voice. The Marquis was a little deaf. 
“Is it all chance then?” 

“Oh, yes,” he answered, with his ready laugh, and 
as he spoke without lowering his voice she played 
softly on the old piano the simple melody of his song. 
“It is all chance, mademoiselle. Did they not teach 
you that at the school at Saintes?” 

But she was not in a humour to join in his ready 
laughter. The room was rosy with the glow of the 
setting sun, she breathed the scent of the mignonette 
at every breath, the air which she had picked out on 
the spinet in unison with his clear and sympathetic 
voice had those minor tones and slow slurring from 
note to note which are characteristic of the gay and 
tearful songs of southern France and all Spain. Hone 
of which things are conducive to gaiety when one is 
young. 

She glanced at him with one quick turn of the 
head and made no answer. But she played the air 
over again — the girls sing it to this day over their 
205 


THE LAST HOPE 


household work at Earlingford to other words — with 
her foot on the soft pedal. The Marquis hummed 
it between his teeth at the other end of the room. 

“This room is hot,” she exclaimed, suddenly, and 
rose from her seat without troubling to finish the 
melody. 

“And that window will not open, mademoiselle; 
for I have tried it,” added Barebone, watching her 
impatient movements. 

“Then I am going into the garden,” she said, with 
a sharp sigh and a wilful toss of the head. 

It was not his fault that the setting sun, against 
which, as many have discovered, men shut their 
doors, should happen to be burning hot or that the 
window would not open. But Juliette seemed to 
blame him for it or for something else, perhaps. One 
never knows. 

Barebone did not follow her at once, but stood by 
the window talking to the Marquis, who was in a 
reminiscent humour. The old man interrupted his 
own narrative, however. 

“There,” he cried, “is Juliette on that wall over- 
hanging the river. It is where the English effected 
a breach long ago, my friend — you need not smile, for 
you are no Englishman — and the chateau has only 
been taken twice through all the centuries of fighting. 
There ! She ventures still farther. I have told her 
a hundred times that the wall is unsafe.” 

206 


IN THE BREACH 


“Shall I go and warn her the hundred-and-first 
time?” asked Loo, willing enough. 

“Yes, my friend, do. And speak to her severely. 
She is only a child, remember.” 

“Yes; I will remember that.” 

Juliette did not seem to hear his approach across 
the turf where the goats fed now, but stood with her 
back toward him, a few feet below him, actually in 
that breach effected long ago by those pestilential 
English. They must have prized out the great stones 
with crowbars and torn them down with their bare 
hands. 

Juliette was looking over the vineyards toward the 
river, which gleamed across the horizon. She was 
humming to herself the last lines of the song : 

D’un bout du monde 
A 1’ autre bout, 

Le Hasard seul fait tout. 

She turned with a pretty swing of her skirts to 
gather them in her hand. 

“You must go no farther, mademoiselle,” said 

Loo. 

She stopped, half bending to take her skirt, but 
did not look back. Then she took two steps down- 
ward from stone to stone. The blocks were half em- 
bedded in the turf and looked ready to fall under the 
smallest additional weight. 

207 


THE LAST HOPE 


"It is not I who say so, but your father who sent 
me,” explained the admonisher from above. 

“Since it is all chance — ” she said, looking down- 
ward. 

She turned suddenly and looked up at him with 
that impatience which gives way in later life to a 
philosophy infinitely to be dreaded when it comes; 
for its real name is indifference. 

Her movements were spasmodic and quick as if 
something angered her; she knew not what. As if 
she wanted something; she knew not what. 

“I suppose,” she said, “that it was chance that 
saved our lives that night two months ago, out there.” 

And she stood with one hand stretched out behind 
her pointing toward the estuary, which was quiet 
enough now, looking up at him with that strange 
anger or new disquietude — it was hard to tell which 
— glowing in her eyes. The wind fluttered her hair, 
which was tied low down with a ribbon in the mode 
named “d la diable” by some French wit with a sore 
heart in an old man’s breast. Eor none other could 
have so aptly described it. 

“All chance, mademoiselle,” he answered, looking 
over her head toward the river. 

“And it would have been the same had it been only 
Marie or Marie and J ean in the boat with you ?” 

“The boat would have been as solid and the ropes 
as strong.” 


208 


IN THE BREACH 

“And you ?” asked the girl, with a glance from her 
persistent eyes. 

“Oh, no !” he answered, with a laugh. “I should 
not have been the same. But you must not continue 
to stand there, mademoiselle ; the wall is unsafe.” 

She shrugged her shoulders and stood with half- 
averted face, looking down at the vineyards which 
stretched away to the dunes by the river. Her cheeks 
were oddly flushed. 

“Your father sent me to say so,” continued Loo, 
“and if he sees that you take no heed he will come 
himself to learn why.” 

Juliette gave a curt laugh and climbed the declivity 
toward him. The argument was, it seemed, a sound 
one. When she reached his level he made a step or 
two along the path that ran round the enceinte — not 
toward the house, however — but away from it. She 
accepted the tacit suggestion, not tacitly, however. 

“Shall we not go and tell papa we have returned 
without mishap?” she amended, with a light laugh. 

“No, mademoiselle,” he answered. It was his turn 
to be grave now and she glanced at him with a gleam 
of satisfaction beneath her lids. She was not con- 
tent with that, however, but wished to make him 
angry. So she laughed again and they would have 
quarrelled if he had not kept his lips firmly closed 
and looked straight in front of him. 

They passed between the unfinished ruin known as 
209 


THE LAST HOPE 


the Italian house and the rampart. The Italian 
house screened them from the windows of that por- 
tion of the ancient stabling which the Marquis had 
made habitable when he bought back the chateau of 
Gemosac from the descendant of an adventurous re- 
publican to whom the estate had been awarded in the 
days of the Terror. A walk of lime-trees bordered 
that part of the garden which lies to the west of the 
Italian house, and no other part was visible from 
where Juliette paused to watch the sun sink below 
the distant horizon. Loo was walking a few paces be- 
hind her, and when she stopped he stopped also. She 
sat down on the low wall, but he remained standing. 

Her profile, clear-cut and delicate with its short 
chin and beautifully curved lips, its slightly aquiline 
nose and crisp hair rising in a bold curve from her 
forehead, was outlined against the sky. He could see 
the gleam of the western light in her eyes, which were 
half averted. While she watched the sunset he 
watched her with a puzzled expression about his lips. 

He remembered perhaps the Marquis’s last words, 
that Juliette was only a child. He knew that she 
could in all human calculation know nothing of the 
world; that at least she could have learned nothing 
of it in the convent where she had been educated. So, 
if she knew anything, she must have known it before 
she went there, which was impossible. She knew 
nothing, therefore, and yet she was not a child. As 
210 


IN THE BREACH 


a matter of fact, she was the most beautiful woman 
Loo Barebone had ever seen. He was thinking that 
as she sat on the low wall swinging one slipper half 
falling from her foot, watching the sunset, while he 
watched her and noted the anger slowly dying from 
her eyes as the light faded from the sky. That 
strange anger went down, it would appear, with the 
sun. After the long silence — when the low bars of 
red cloud lying across the western sky were fading 
from pink to gray — she spoke at last in a voice which 
he had never heard before, gentle and confidential. 

“When are you going away ?” she asked. 

“To-night.” 

And he knew that the very hour of his departure 
was known to her already. 

“And when will you come back ?” 

“As soon as I can,” he answered, half-involuntar- 
ily. There was a turn of the head half toward him, 
something expectant in the tilt at the corner of her 
parted lips, which made it practically impossible to 
make any other answer. 

“Why ?” she asked, in little more than a whisper — 
then she broke into a gay laugh and leapt off the wall. 
She walked quickly past him. 

“Why?” she repeated over her shoulder as she 
passed him. And he was too quick for her; for he 
caught her hand and touched it with his lips before 
she jerked it away from him. 

211 


THE LAST HOPE 


“Because you are here,” he answered, with a 
laugh. But she was grave again and looked at him 
with a queer searching glance before she turned away 
and left him standing in the half-light — thinking of 
Miriam Liston. 


212 


CHAPTEE XX 


“nineteen” 

As Juliette returned to the Gate House she en- 
countered her father, walking arm in arm with Dor- 
mer Colville. The presence of the Englishman within 
the enceinte of the chateau was probably no surprise 
to her, for she must have heard the clang of the bell 
just within the gate, which could not be opened from 
outside ; by which alone access was gained to any part 
of the chateau. 

Colville was in riding costume. It was, indeed, 
his habitual dress when living in France; for he made 
no concealment of his partnership in a well-known 
business house in Bordeaux. 

“I am a sleeping partner,” he would say, with that 
easy flow of egotistic confidence which is the surest 
way of learning somewhat of your neighbour’s private 
affairs. “I am a sleeping partner at all times except 
the vintage, when I awake and ride round among the 
growers, to test their growth.” 

It was too early yet for these journeys, for the 
grapes were hardly ripe. But anyone who wished to 
move from place to place must needs do so in the 
213 


THE LAST HOPE 


saddle in a country where land is so valuable that the 
width of a road is grudged, and bridle-ways are 
deemed good enough for the passage of the long and 
narrow carts that carry wine. 

Ever since their somewhat precipitate departure 
from the Villa Cordouan at Koyan, Dormer Colville 
and Barebone had been in company. They had stayed 
together, in one friend’s house or another. Sometimes 
they enjoyed the hospitality of a chateau, and at others 
put up with the scanty accommodation of a priest’s 
house or the apartment of a retired military officer, in 
one of those little towns of provincial France at which 
the cheap journalists of Paris are pleased to sneer 
without ceasing. 

They avoided the large towns with extraordinary 
care. 

“Why should we go to towns,” asked Colville, 
jovially, “when we have business in the country and 
the sun is still high in the sky ?” 

“Yes,” he would reply to the questions of an indis- 
creet fellow-traveller, at table or on the road. “Yes ; 
I am a buyer of wine. We are buyers of wine. We 
are travelling from place to place to watch the growth. 
For the wine is hidden in the grape, and the grape is 
ripening.” 

And, as often as not, the chance acquaintance of an 
inn dejeuner would catch the phrase and repeat it 
thoughtfully. 


214 


‘NINETEEN” 


“Ah ! is that so ?” he would ask, with a sudden 
glance at Dormer Colville’s companion, who had 
hitherto passed unobserved as the silent subordinate 
of a large buyer ; learning his trade, no doubt. “The 
grape is ripening. Good !” 

And as sure as he seemed to he struck with this 
statement of a self-evident fact, he would, in the next 
few minutes, bring the numeral “nineteen” — “tant 
bien que mal” — into his conversation. 

“With nineteen days of sun, the vintage will be 
upon us,” he would say; or, “I have but nineteen 
kilometres more of road before me to-day.” 

Indeed, it frequently happened that the word came 
in very inappropriately, as if tugged heroically to the 
front by a clumsy conversationalist. 

There is no hazard of life so certain to discover 
sympathy or antagonism as travel ; a fact which points 
to the wisdom of beginning married life with a jour- 
ney. The majority of people like to know the worst 
at once. To travel, however, with Dormer Colville 
was a liberal education in the virtues. No man could 
be less selfish or less easily fatigued; which are the 
two bases upon which rest all the stumbling-blocks of 
travel. 

Up to a certain point, Barebone and Dormer Col- 
ville became fast friends during the month that 
elapsed between their departure from Mrs. St. Pierre 
Lawrence’s house and their arrival at the inn at Gemo- 
215 


THE LAST HOPE 


sac. The “White Horse,” at Gemosac, was no better 
and no worse than any other “White Horse” in any 
other small town of France. It was, however, better 
than the principal inn of a town of the same size in 
any other habitable part of the globe. 

There were many reasons why the Marquis de Gem- 
osac had yielded to Colville’s contention — that the 
time had not yet come for Loo Barebone to be his 
guest at the chateau. 

“He is inclined to be indolent,” Colville had whis- 
pered. “One recognises, in many traits of character, 
the source from whence his blood is drawn. He will 
not exert himself so long as there is someone else at 
hand who is prepared to take trouble. He must 
learn that it is necessary to act for himself. He needs 
rousing. Let him travel through France, and see for 
himself that of which he has as yet only learnt at 
second-hand. That will rouse him.” 

And the journey through the valleys of the Garonne 
and the Dordogne had been undertaken. 

Another, greater journey, was now afoot, to end at 
no less a centre of political life than Paris. A start 
was to be made this evening, and Dormer Colville 
now came to report that all was ready and the horses 
at the gate. 

“If there were scenes such as this for all of us to 
linger in, mademoiselle,” he said, lifting his face to 
the western sky and inhaling the scent of the flowers 
216 


“NINETEEN” 


growing knee-deep all around him, “men would ac- 
complish little in their brief lifetime.” 

His eyes, dreamy and reflective, wandered over the 
scene and paused, just for a moment in passing, on Ju- 
liette’s face. She continued her way, with no other 
answer than a smile. 

“She grows, my dear Marquis — she grows every 
minute of the day and wakes up a new woman every 
morning,” said Colville, in a confidential aside ; and 
he went forward to meet Loo with his accustomed 
laugh of good-fellowship. He whom the world calls 
a good fellow is never a wise man. 

Barebone walked toward the gate without joining 
in the talk of his companions. He was thoughtful 
and uneasy. He had come to say good-bye and noth- 
ing else. He was wondering if he had really meant 
what he had said. 

“Come,” interrupted Colville’s smooth voice. 
“We must get into the saddle and begone. I was 
just telling Monsieur and Mademoiselle Juliette, 
that any man might he tempted to linger at 
Gemosac until the active years of a lifetime rolled 
by.” 

The Marquis made the needful reply ; hoping that 
he might yet live to see Gemosac — and not only Gem- 
osac, but a hundred chateaux like it — reawakened to 
their ancient glory, and thrown open to welcome the 
restorer of their fallen fortunes. 

217 


THE LAST HOPE 


Colville looked from one to the other, and then, 
with his foot in the stirrup, turned to look at Juliette, 
who had followed them to the gate. 

“And mademoiselle,” he said; “will she wish us 
good luck, also? Alas! those times are gone when 
we could have asked for her ribbon to wear, and to 
fight for between ourselves when we are tired and 
cross at the end of a journey. Come, Barebone — into 
the saddle.” 

They waited, both looking at Juliette ; for she had 
not spoken. 

“I wish you good luck,” she said, at length, patting 
the neck of Colville’s horse, her face wearing a little 
mystic smile. 

Thus they departed, at sunset, on a journey of 
which old men will still talk in certain parts of 
France. Here and there, in the Angoumois, in Gui- 
enne, in the Vendee, and in the western parts of Brit- 
tany, the student of forgotten history may find an old 
priest who will still persist in dividing France into 
the ancient provinces, and will tell how Hope rode 
through the Boyalist country when he himself was 
busy at his first cure. 

The journey lasted nearly two months; and before 
they passed north of the Loire, at Nantes, and quitted 
the wine country, the vintage was over. 

“We must say that we are cider merchants, that is 
all,” observed Dormer Colville, when they crossed the 
218 


“NINETEEN” 

river, which has always been the great divider of 
France. 

“He is sobering down. I believe he will become 
■serious,” wrote he to the Marquis de Gemosac. But 
he took care to leave Loo Barebone as free as possible. 

“I am, in a way, a compulsory pilot,” he explained, 
airily, to his companion. “The ship is yours, and you 
probably know more about the shoals than I do. You 
must have felt that a hundred times when you were 
at sea with that solemn old sailor, Captain Clubbe. 
And yet, before you could get into port, you found 
yourself forced to take the compulsory pilot on board 
and make him welcome with such grace as you could 
command, feeling all the while that he did not want 
to come and you could have done as well without him. 
So you must put up with my company as gracefully 
as you can, remembering that you can drop me as 
soon as you are in port.” 

And surely, none other could have occupied an un- 
comfortable position so gracefully. 

Barebone found that he had not much to do. He 
soon accommodated himself to a position which re- 
quired nothing more active than a ready ear and a 
gracious patience. For, day by day — almost hour by 
hour — it was his lot to listen to protestations of loy- 
alty to a cause which smouldered none the less hotly 
because it was hidden from the sight of the Prince 
President’s spies. 


219 


THE LAST HOPE 


And, as Colville had predicted, Barebone sobered 
down. He would ride now, hour after hour, in silence, 
whereas at the beginning of the journey he had talked 
gaily enough, seeing a hundred humourous incidents 
in the passing events of the day ; laughing at the rec- 
ollection of an interview with some provincial notable 
who had fallen behind the times, or jesting readily 
enough with such as showed a turn for joking on the 
road. 

But now the unreality of his singular change of 
fortune was vanishing. Every village priest who 
came after dark to take a glass of wine with them at 
their inn sent it farther into the past, every provincial 
noble greeting him on the step of his remote and quiet 
house added a note to the drumming reality which 
dominated his waking moments and disturbed his 
sleep at night. 

Day by day they rode on, passing through two or 
three villages between such halts as were needed by 
the horses. At every hamlet; in the large villages, 
where they rested and had their food ; at the remote 
little town where they passed a night, there was al- 
ways someone expecting them, who came and talked 
of the weather and more or less skilfully brought in 
the numeral nineteen. “Nineteen ! Nineteen !” It 
was a watchword all over France. 

Long before, on the banks of the Dordogne, Loo had 
asked his companion why that word had been selected 
— what it meant. 


220 


“NINETEEN” 


“It means Louis XIX.,” replied Dormer Colville, 
-gravely. 

And now, as they rode through a country so rural, 
so thinly populated and remote that nothing like it 
may be found in these crowded islands, the number 
seemed to follow them; or, rather, to pass on before 
them and await their coming. 

Often Colville would point silently with his whip 
to the numerals, scrawled on a gate-post or writ- 
ten across a wall. At this time France was mys- 
teriously flooded with cheap portraits of the great 
Napoleon. It was before the days of pictorial adver- 
tisement, and young ladies who wished to make an 
advantageous marriage had no means of advertising 
the fact and themselves in supplements to illustrated 
papers. The walls of inns and shops and “diligence” 
offices were therefore barer than they are to-day. And 
from these bare walls stared out at this time the well- 
known face of the great Napoleon. It was an innova- 
tion, and as such readily enough accepted. 

At every fair ; at the great fete of St. Jean ; at St. 
Jean d’Angely, and a hundred other fetes of purely 
local notoriety, at least one hawker of cheap litho- 
graphs was to be found. And if the buyer haggled, 
he could get the portrait of the great Emperor for 
almost nothing. 

“One cannot print it at such a cost,” the seller as- 
sured his purchasers, which was no less than the truth. 

221 


THE LAST HOPE 


The fairs were, and are to this day, the link be- 
tween the remoter villages and the world; and the 
peasants carried home with them a picture, for the 
first time, to hang on their walls. Thus the Prince 
President fostered the Napoleonic legend. 

Dormer Colville would walk up to these pictures, 
and, as often as not, would turn and look over his 
shoulder at Barebone, with a short laugh. For as 
often as not, the numerals were scrawled across the 
face in pencil. 

But Barebone had ceased to laugh at the constant 
repetition now. Soon Colville ceased to point out the 
silent witness, for he perceived that Loo was looking 
for it himself, detecting its absence with a gleam of 
determination in his eyes or noting its recurrence with 
a sharp sigh, as of the consciousness of a great re- 
sponsibility. 

Thus the reality was gradually forced upon him 
that that into which he had entered half in jest was 
no jest at all ; that he was moving forward on a road 
which seemed easy enough, but of which the end was 
not perceptible ; neither was there any turning to one 
side or the other. 

All men who have made a mark — whether it be a 
guiding or warning sign to those that follow — must at 
one moment of their career have perceived their road 
before them, thus. Each must have realised that once 
set out upon that easy path there is no turning aside 
222 


“NINETEEN” 


and no turning back. And many have chosen to turn 
back while there was yet time, leaving the mark un- 
made. For most men are cowards and shun responsi- 
bility. Most men unconsciously steer their way by 
proverb or catchword ; and all the wise saws of all the 
nations preach cowardice. 

Barebone saw his road now, and Dormer Colville 
knew that he saw it. 

When they crossed the Loire they passed the crisis, 
and Colville breathed again like one who had held his 
breath for long. Those colder, sterner men of Brit- 
tany, who, in later times, compared notes with the 
nobles of Guienne and the Vendee, seemed to talk of 
a different man; for they spoke of one who rarely 
laughed, and never turned aside from a chosen path 
which was in no wise bordered by flowers. 


223 


CHAPTER XXI 


NO. 8 RUELLE ST. JACOB 

Between the Rue de Lille and the Boulevard St. 
Germain, in the narrow streets which to this day 
have survived the sweeping influence of Baron 
Haussmann, once Prefect of the Seine, there are 
many houses which scarcely seem to have opened door 
or window since the great Revolution. 

One of these, to he precise, is situated in the Ruelle 
St. Jacob, hardly wider than a lane — a short street 
with a blind end against high walls — into which any 
vehicle that enters must needs do so with the knowl- 
edge of having to back out again. For there is no 
room to turn. Which is an allegory. All the win- 
dows in fact that look forlornly at the blank walls 
or peep over the high gateways into the Ruelle St. 
Jacob are Royalist windows looking into a street 
which is blinded by a high wall and is too narrow 
to allow of turning. 

Many of the windows would appear to have gath- 
ered dust since those days more than a hundred years 
ago when white faces peeped from them and trem- 
224 


NO. 8 RUELLE ST. JACOB 

bling hands unbarred the sash to listen to the roar 
of voices in the Rue du Bac, in the open space by 
the church of St. Germain des Pres, in the Cite, 
all over Paris, where the people were making his- 
tory. 

To this house in the Ruelle St. Jacob, Dormer 
Colville and Loo Barebone made their way on foot, 
on their arrival in Paris at the termination of their 
long journey. 

It was nearly dark, for Colville had arranged to 
approach the city and leave their horses at a stable 
at Meudon after dusk. 

“It is foolish,” he said, gaily, to his companion, “to 
flaunt a face like yours in Paris by daylight.” 

They had driven from Meudon in a hired carriage 
to the corner of the Champ de Mars, in those days 
still innocent of glass houses and exhibition build- 
ings, for Paris was not yet the toy-shop of the world ; 
and from the Champ de Mars they came on foot 
through the ill-paved, feebly lighted streets. In the 
Ruelle St. Jacob itself there was only one lamp, 
burning oil, swinging at the corner. The remainder 
of the lane depended for its illumination on the win- 
dows of two small shops retailing firewood and pic- 
kled gherkins and balls of string gray with age, as do 
all the shops in the narrow streets on the wrong side 
of the Seine. 

Dormer Colville led the way, picking his steps 

225 


THE LAST HOPE 


from side to side of the gutter which meandered 
odoriferously down the middle of the street toward 
the river. He stopped in front of the great gate- 
way and looked up at the arch of it, where the stone 
carving had been carefully obliterated by some en- 
thusiastic citizen armed with a hatchet. 

“Ichabod,” he said, with a short laugh; and cau- 
tiously laid hold of the dangling bell-handle which 
had summoned the porter to open to a Queen in those 
gay days when Marie Antoinette light-heartedly 
pushed a falling monarchy down the incline. 

The great gate was not opened in response, but a 
small side door, deep-sunken in the thickness of the 
wall. On either jamb of the door was affixed in the 
metal letters ordained by the municipality the num- 
ber eight. Number Eight Ruelle St. Jacob had once 
been known to kings as the Hotel Gemosac. 

The man who opened carried a lantern and held 
the door ajar with a grudging hand while he peered 
out. One could almost imagine that he had survived 
the downfall and the Restoration, and a couple of 
republics, behind the high walls. 

The court-yard was paved with round cobble-stones 
no bigger than an apple, and, even by the flickering 
light of the lantern, it was perceptible that no weed 
had been allowed to grow between the stones or in 
the seams of the wide low steps that led to an open 
door. 


226 


NO. 8 RUELLE ST. JACOB 


The house appeared to be dark and deserted. 

“Yes, Monsieur le Marquis — Monsieur le Mar- 
quis is at home,” muttered the man with a bronchial 
chuckle, and led the way across the yard. He wore 
a sort of livery, which must have been put away for 
years. A young man had been measured for the coat 
which now displayed three deep creases across a bent 
back. 

“Attention — attention,” he said, in a warning 
voice, while he scraped a sulphur match in the hall. 
“There are holes in the carpets. It is easy to trip 
and fall.” 

He lighted the candle, and after having carefully 
shut and bolted the door he led the way upstairs. 
At their approach, easily audible in the empty house 
by reason of the hollow creaking of the oak floor, a 
door was opened at the head of the stairs and a flood 
of light met the new-comers. 

In the doorway, which was ten feet high, the little 
bent form of the Marquis de Gemosac stood waiting. 

“Ah ! ah !” he said, with that pleasant manner of 
his generation, which was refined and spirituelle and 
sometimes dramatic, and yet ever failed to touch 
aught but the surface of life. “Ah! ah! Safely 
accomplished — the great journey. Safely accom- 
plished. You permit ” 

And he embraced Barebone after the custom of his. 
day. 


227 


THE LAST HOPE 


“From all sides,” he said, when the door was 
closed, “I hear that you have done great things. 
From every quarter one hears your praise.” 

He held him at arm’s length. 

“Yes,” he said. “Your face is graver and — more 
striking in resemblance than ever. So now you know 
— now you have seen.” 

“Yes,” answered Barebone, gravely. “I have seen 
and I know.” 

The Marquis rubbed his white hands together and 
gave a little cackling laugh of delight as he drew for- 
ward a chair to the fire, which was of logs as long as 
a barrel. The room was a huge one, and it was light- 
ed from end to end with lamps, as if for a reception 
or a ball. The air was damp and mouldy. There 
were patches of gray on the walls, which had once 
been painted with garlands of roses and Cupids and 
pastoral scenes by a noted artist of the Great 
Age. 

The ceiling had fallen in places, and the woodwork 
of the carved furniture gave forth a subtle scent of 
dry rot. 

But everything was in an exquisite taste which 
vulgarer generations have never yet succeeded in 
imitating. Nothing was concealed, but rather dis- 
played with a half-cynical pride. All was moth-rid- 
den, worm-eaten, fallen to decay — but it was of the 
Monarchy. Not half a dozen houses in Paris, where 
228 


NO. 8 RUELLE ST. JACOB 


already the wealth, which has to-day culminated in a 
ridiculous luxury of outward show, was beginning to 
build new palaces, could show room after room fur- 
nished in the days of the Great Louis. The very 
air, faintly scented it would seem by some forgot- 
ten perfume, breathed of a bygone splendour. And 
the last of the de Gemosacs scorned to screen his pov- 
erty from the eyes of his equals, nor sought to hide 
from them a desolation which was only symbolic of 
that which crushed their hearts and bade them steal 
back from time to time like criminals to the 
capital. 

“You see,” he said to Colville and Barebone, “I 
have kept my promise, I have thrown open this old 
house once more for to-night’s meeting. You will 
find that many friends have made the journey to 
Paris for the occasion: Madame de Chantonnay and 
Albert, Madame de Rathe and many from the Ven- 
dee and the west whom you have met on your jour- 
ney. And to-night one may speak without fear, for 
none will be present who are not vouched for by the 
Almanac de Gotha. There are no Royalists pour 
rire or pour vivre to-night. You have but time to 
change your clothes and dine. Your luggage arrived 
yesterday. You will forgive the stupidity of old 
servants who have forgotten their business. Come, I 
will lead the way and show you your rooms.” 

He took a candle and did the honours of the de- 

229 


THE LAST HOPE 


serted dust-ridden house in the manner of the high 
calling which had been his twenty years ago when 
Charles X. was king. Eor some there lingers a cer- 
tain pathos in the sight of a belated survival, while 
the majority of men and women are ready to smile 
at it instead. And yet the Monarchy lasted eight 
centuries and the Revolution eight years. Perhaps 
Eate may yet exact payment for the excesses of those 
eight years from a nation for which the watching 
world already prepares a secondary place in the coun- 
cils of empire. 

The larger room had been assigned to Loo. There 
was a subtle difference in the Marquis’s manner tow- 
ard him. He made an odd bow as he quitted the 
room. 

“There,” said Colville, whose room communicated 
with this great apartment by a dressing-room and 
two doors. He spoke in English, as they always did 
when they were alone together. “There — you are 
launched. You are lance, my friend. I may say you 
are through the shoals now and out on the high 
seas ” 

He paused, candle in hand, and looked round the 
room with a reflective smile. It was obviously the 
best room in the house, with a fireplace as wide as 
a gate, where logs of pine burnt briskly on high iron 
dogs. The bed loomed mysteriously in one corner 
with its baldachin of Gobelin tapestry. Here, too, 
230 


NO. 8 KUELLE ST. JACOB 


the dim scent of fallen monarchy lingered in the 
atmosphere. A portrait of Louis XVI. in a faded 
frame hung over the mantelpiece. 

“And the time will come,” pursued Colville, with 
his melancholy, sympathetic smile, “when you will 
find it necessary to drop the pilot — to turn your face 
seaward and your back upon old recollections and old 
associations. You cannot make an omelette without 
breaking eggs, my friend.” 

“Oh, yes,” replied Barebone, with a brisk move- 
ment of the head, “I shall have to forget Far ling- 
ford.” 

Colville had moved toward the door that led to his 
own room. He paused, examining the wick of the 
candle he carried in his hand. Then, though glib of 
speech, he decided in favour of silence, and went 
away without making reply. 

Loo sat down in a gray old arm-chair in front of 
the fire. The house was astoundingly noiseless, 
though situated in what had once been the heart of 
Paris. It was one of the few houses left in this quar- 
ter with a large garden. And the traffic passing in 
and out of the Kuelle St. Jacob went slipshod on its 
own feet. The busy crackle of the wood was the only 
sound to break a silence which seemed part of this 
vast palace of memories. 

Loo had ridden far and was tired. He smiled 
grimly at the fire. It is to be supposed that he was 
231 


THE LAST HOPE 

sitting down to the task he had set himself — to forget 
Farlingford. 

There was a great reception at the Hotel Gemosac 
that night, and after twenty years of brooding silence 
the rooms, hastily set in order, were lighted up. 

There was, as the Marquis had promised, no man 
or woman present who was not vouched for by a 
noble name or by history. As the old man presented 
them, their names were oddly familiar to the ear, 
while each face looking at Loo seemed to be the face 
of a ghost looking out of a past which the world will 
never forget so long as history lives. 

And here, again, was the subtle difference. They 
no longer talked to Loo, but stood apart and spoke 
among themselves in a hushed voice. Men made 
their bow to him and met his smile with grave and 
measuring eyes. Some made a little set speech, which 
might mean much or nothing. Others embarked on 
such a speech and paused; faltered, and passed on 
gulping something down in their throats. 

Women made a deep reverence to him and glanced 
at him with parted lips and white faces — no coquetry 
in their eyes. They saw that he was young and good- 
looking; but they forgot that he might think the 
same of them. Then they passed on and grouped 
themselves together, as women do in moments of dan- 
ger or emotion, their souls instinctively seeking the 
company of other souls tuned to catch a hundred 
232 


NO. 8 RUELLE ST. JACOB 

passing vibrations of the heart-strings of which men 
remain in ignorance. They spoke together in low- 
ered voices without daring, or desiring, perhaps, to 
turn and look at him again. 

“It only remains,” someone said, “for the Duchesse 
d’Angouleme to recognise his claim. A messenger 
has departed for Frohsdorf.” 

And Barebone, looking at them, knew that there 
was a barrier between him and them which none 
could cast aside: a barrier erected in the past and 
based on the sure foundations of history. 

“She is an old woman,” said Monsieur de Gemo- 
sac to any who spoke to him on this subject. “She 
is seventy-two, and fifty-eight of those years have 
been marked by greater misfortunes than ever fell 
to the lot of a woman. When she came out of prison 
she had no tears left, my friends. We cannot expect 
her to turn back willingly to the past now. But we 
know that in her heart she has never been sure that 
her brother died in the Temple. You know how 
many disappointments she has had. We must not 
awake her sleeping sorrow until all is ready. I shall 
make the journey to Frohsdorf — that I promise you. 
But to-night we have another task before us.” 

“Yes — yes,” answered his listeners. “You are to 
open the locket. Where is it ? — show it to us.” 

And the locket which Captain Clubbe’s wife had 
given to Dormer Colville was handed from one to 
233 


THE LAST HOPE 


another. It was not of great value, but it was of gold 
with stones, long since discoloured, set in silver 
around it. It was crushed and misshapen. 

“It has never been opened for twenty years,” they 
told each other. “It has been mislaid in an obscure 
village in England for nearly half a century.” 

“The Vicomte de Castel Aunet — who is so clever 
a mechanician — has promised to bring his tools,” 
said Monsieur de Gemosac. “He will open it for us 
— even if he find it necessary to break the locket.” 

So the thing went round the room until it came to 
Loo Barebone. 

“I have seen it before,” he said. “I think I re- 
member seeing it long ago — when I was a little 
child.” 

And he handed it to the old Vicomte de Castel 
Aunet, whose shaking fingers closed round it in a 
breathless silence. He carried it to the table, and 
someone brought candles. The Vicomte was very 
old. He had learnt clock-making, they said, in prison 
during the Terror. 

“II n’y a moven,” he whispered to himself. “I 
must break it.” 

With one effort he prised up the cover, but the 
hinge snapped, and the lid rolled across the table 
into Barebone’s hand. 

“Ah !” he cried, in that breathless silence, “now I 
remember it. I remember the red silk lining of the 
234 


NO. 8 RUELLE ST. JACOB 

cover, and in the other side there is the portrait of a 
lady with ” 

The Yicomte paused, with his palm covering the 
other half of the locket and looked across at Loo. 
And the eyes of all Royalist France were fixed on the 
same face. 

“Silence !” whispered Dormer Colville in English, 
crushing Barebone’s foot under the table. 


235 


CHAPTER XXII 


CHOPPING THE PILOT 

“The portrait of a lady,” repeated Loo, slowly. 
“Young and beautiful. That much I remember.” 

The old nobleman had never removed his covering 
hand from the locket. He had never glanced at it 
himself. He looked slowly round the peering faces, 
two and three deep round the table. He was the 
oldest man present — one of the oldest in Paris — one 
of the few now living who had known Marie An- 
toinette. 

Without uncovering the locket, he handed it to 
Barebone across the table with a bow worthy of the 
old regime and his own historic name. 

“It is right that you should be the first to see it,” 
he said. “Since there is no longer any doubt that 
that lady was your father’s mother.” 

Loo took the locket, looked at it with strangely 
glittering eyes and steady lips. He gave a sort of 
gasp, which all in the room heard. He was handing 
it back to the Yicomte de Castel Aunet without a 
word of comment, when a crashing fall on the bare 
floor startled everyone. A lady had fainted. 

236 


DROPPING THE PILOT 


“Thank God,” muttered Dormer Colville almost 
in Barebone’s ear and swayed against him. Bare- 
bone turned and looked into a face gray and haggard, 
and shining with perspiration. Instinctively he 
grasped him by the arm and supported him. In the 
confusion of the moment no one noticed Colville; 
for all were pressing round the prostrate lady. And 
in a moment Colville was himself again, though the 
ready smile sat oddly on such white lips. 

“For God’s sake be careful,” he said, and turned 
away, handkerchief in hand. 

For the moment the portrait was forgotten until 
the lady was on her feet again, smiling reassurances 
and rubbing her elbow. 

“It is nothing,” she said, “nothing. My heart — 
that is all.” 

And she staggered to a chair with the reassuring 
smile frozen on her face. 

Then the portrait was passed from hand to hand 
in silence. It was a miniature of Marie Antoinette, 
painted on ivory, which had turned yellow. The col- 
ours were almost lost, but the face stood clearly 
enough. It was the face of a young girl, long and 
narrow, with the hair drawn straight up and dressed 
high and simply on the head without ornament. 

“It is she,” said one and another. “C’est bien 
elle.” 

“It was painted when she was newly a queen,” 

237 


THE LAST HOPE 

commented the Vicomte de Castel Aunet. “I have 
seen others like it, but not that one before.” 

Barebone stood apart and no one offered to ap- 
proach him. Dormer Colville had gone toward the 
great fireplace, and was standing by himself there 
with his back toward the room. He was surrep- 
titiously wiping from his face the perspiration which 
had suddenly run down it, as one may see the rain 
running down the face of a statue. 

Things had taken an unexpected turn. The Mar- 
quis de Gemosac, himself always on the surface, had 
stirred others more deeply than he had anticipated or 
could now understand. France has always been the 
victim of her own emotions; aroused in the first in- 
stance half in idleness, allowed to swell with a semi- 
restraining laugh, and then suddenly sweeping and 
overwhelming. History tells of a hundred such 
crises in the pilgrimage of the French people. A few 
more — and historians shall write “Ichabod” across 
the most favoured land in Europe. 

It is customary to relate that, after a crisis, those 
most concerned in it know not how they faced it or 
what events succeeded it. “He never knew,” we are 
informed, “how he got through the rest of the even- 
ing.” 

Loo Barebone knew and remembered every inci- 
dent, every glance. He was in full possession of 
every faculty, and never had each been so keenly 
238 


DROPPING THE PILOT 


alive to the necessity of the moment. Never had 
his quick brain been so alert as it was during the 
rest of the evening. And those who had come to the 
Hotel Gemosac to confirm their adoption of a figure- 
head went away with the startling knowledge in 
their hearts that they had never in the course of an 
artificial life met a man less suited to play that un- 
dignified part. 

And all the while, in the back of his mind, there 
lingered with a deadly patience the desire for the 
moment which must inevitably come when he should 
at last find himself alone, face to face, with Dormer 
Colville. 

It was nearly midnight before this moment came. 
At last the latest guest had taken his leave, quitting 
the house by the garden door and making his way 
across that forlorn and weedy desert by the dim 
light reflected from the clouds above. At last the 
Marquis de Gemosac had bidden them good-night, 
and they were left alone in the vast bedroom which 
a dozen candles, in candelabras of silver blackened 
by damp and neglect, only served to render more 
gloomy and mysterious. 

In the confusion consequent on the departure of 
so many guests the locket had been lost sight of, and 
Monsieur de Gemosac forgot to make inquiry for it. 
It was in Barebone’s pocket. 

Colville put together with the toe of his boot the 

239 


THE LAST HOPE 


logs which were smouldering in a glow of incandes- 
cent heat. He turned and glanced over his shoulder 
toward his companion. 

Barehone was taking the locket from his waist- 
coat pocket and approaching the table where the 
candles burnt low in their sockets. 

“You never really supposed you were the man, 
did you?” asked Colville, with a ready smile. He 
was brave, at all events, for he took the only course 
left to him with a sublime assurance. 

Barebone looked across the candles at the face 
which smiled, and smiled. 

“That is what I thought,” he answered, with a 
queer laugh. 

“Do not jump to any hasty decisions,” urged Col- 
ville instantly, as if warned by the laugh. 

“Eb ! I want to sift the matter carefully to the 
bottom. It will be interesting to learn who are the 
deceived and -who the deceivers.” 

Barehone had had time to think out a course of 
action. His face seemed to puzzle Colville, who was 
rarely at fault in such judgments of character as 
came within his understanding. But he seemed for 
an instant to be on the threshold of something be- 
yond his understanding ; and yet he had lived, almost 
day and night, for some months with Barebone. Since 
the beginning — that far-off beginning at Farlingford 
— their respective positions had been quite clearly 
240 


DROPPING THE PILOT 


defined. Colville, the elder by nearly twenty years, 
had always been the guide and mentor and friend — 
the compulsory pilot he had gaily called himself. 
He had a vast experience of the world. He had 
always moved in the best French society. All that 
he knew, all the influence he could command, and the 
experience upon which he could draw were unre- 
servedly at Barebone’s service. The difference in 
years had only affected their friendship in so far as 
it defined their respective positions and prohibited 
any thought of rivalry. Colville had been the un- 
questioned leader, Barebone the ready disciple. 

And now in the twinkling of an eye the positions 
were reversed. Colville stood watching Barebone’s 
face with eyes rendered almost servile by a great sus- 
pense. He waited breathless for the next words. 

“This portrait,” said Barebone, “of the Queen was 
placed in the locket by you ?” 

Colville nodded with a laugh of conscious clever- 
ness rewarded by complete success. There was noth- 
ing in his companion’s voice to suggest suppressed 
anger. It was all right after all. “I had great diffi- 
culty in finding just what I wanted,” he added, mod- 
estly. 

“What I remember — though the memory is neces- 
sarily vague — was a portrait of a woman older than 
this. Her style of dress was more elaborate. Her 
hair was dressed differently, with sort of curls at the 
241 


THE LAST HOPE 


side, and on the top, half buried in the hair, was 
the imitation of a nest — a dove’s nest. Such a thing 
would naturally stick in a child’s memory. It stuck 
in mine.” 

“Yes — and nearly gave the game away to-night,” 
said Colville, gulping down the memory of those tense 
moments. 

“That portrait — the original — you have not de- 
stroyed it ?” 

“Oh, no. It is of some value,” replied Colville, 
almost naively. He felt in his pocket and produced 
a silver cigar-case. The miniature was wrapped in 
a piece of thin paper, which he unfolded. Barebone 
took the painting and examined it with a little nod 
of recognition. His memory had not failed after 
twenty years. 

“Who is this lady?” he asked. 

Dormer Colville hesitated. 

“Do you know the history of that period ?” he in- 
quired, after a moment’s reflection. For the last hour 
he had been trying to decide on a course of conduct. 
During the last few minutes he had been forced to 
change it half a dozen times. 

“Septimus Marvin, of Farlingford, is one of the 
greatest living authorities on those reigns. I learnt 
a good deal from him,” was the answer. 

“That lady is, I think, the Duchesse de Guiche.” 

“You think ” 


242 


DROPPING the pilot 


“Even Marvin could not tell you for certain/’ re- 
plied Colville, mildly. He did not seem to perceive 
a difference in Barebone’ s manner toward himself. 
The quickest intelligence cannot follow another’s 
mind beyond its own depth. 

“Then the inference is that my father was the ille- 
gitimate son of the Comte d’Artois.” 

“Afterward Charles X., of France,” supplemented 
Colville, significantly. 

“Is that the inference?” persisted Barebone. “I 
should like to know your opinion. You must have 
studied the question very carefully. Your opinion 
should be of some interest, though ” 

“Though — ” echoed Colville, interrogatively, and 
regretted it immediately. 

“Though it is impossible to say when you speak the 
truth and when you lie.” 

And any who doubted that there was royal blood 
in Loo Barebone’s veins would assuredly have been 
satisfied by a glance at his face at that moment ; by 
the sound of his quiet, judicial voice ; by the sudden 
and almost terrifying sense of power in his measur- 
ing eyes. 

Colville turned away with an awkward laugh and 
gave his attention to the logs on the hearth. Then 
suddenly he regained his readiness of speech. 

“Look here, Barebone,” he cried. “We must not 
quarrel ; we cannot afford to do that. And after all, 
243 


THE LAST HOPE 


what does it matter ? You are only giving yourself 
the benefit of the doubt — that is all. For there is a 
doubt. You may he what you — what we say you 
are, after all. It is certain enough that Marie An- 
toinette and Fersen were in daily correspondence. 
They were both clever — two of the cleverest people 
in France — and they were both desperate. Kemem- 
ber that. Do you think that they would have failed 
in a matter of such intense interest to her, and there- 
fore to him? All these pretenders, Naundorff and 
the others, have proved that quite clearly, but none 
has succeeded in proving that he was the man.” 

“And do you think that I shall be able to prove 
that I am the man — when I am not?” 

By way of reply Dormer Colville turned again to 
the fireplace and took down the print of Louis XVI. 
engraved from a portrait painted when he was still 
Dauphin. A mirror stood near, and Colville came to 
the table carrying the portrait in one hand, the look- 
ing-glass in the other. 

“Here,” he said, eagerly. “Look at one and then 
at the other. Look in the mirror and then at the 
portrait. Prove it! Why, God has proved it for 
you.” 

“I do not think we had better bring Him into the 
question,” was the retort: an odd reflex of Captain 
Clubbe’s solid East Anglian piety. “No. If we go 
on with the thing at all, let us be honest enough to 
244 


DROPPING THE PILOT 


admit to ourselves that we are dishonest. The por- 
trait in that locket points clearly enough to the 
Truth.” 

“The portrait in that locket is of Marie Antoi- 
nette,” replied Colville, half sullenly. “And no one 
can ever prove anything contrary to that. No one 
except myself knows of — of this doubt which you 
have stumbled upon. De Gemosac, Parson Marvin, 
Clubbe — all of them are convinced that your father 
was the Dauphin.” 

“And Miss Liston?” 

“Miriam Liston — she also, of course. And I be- 
lieve she knew it long before I told her.” 

Barebone turned and looked at him squarely in the 
eyes. Colville wondered a second time why Loo Bare- 
bone reminded him of Captain Clubbe to-night. 

“What makes you believe that ?” he asked. 

“Oh, I don’t know. But that isn’t the question. 
The question is about the future. You see how things 
are in France. It is a question of Louis Napoleon 
or a monarchy — you see that. Unless you stop him 
he will be Emperor before a year is out, and he will 
drag France in the gutter. He is less a Bonaparte 
than you are a Bourbon. You remember that Louis 
Bonaparte himself was the first to say so. He wrote 
a letter to the Pope, saying so quite clearly. You 
will go on with it, of course, Barebone. Say you will 
go on with it. To turn back now would be death ! 

245 


THE LAST HOPE 


We could not do it if we wanted to. I have been 
trying to think about it, and I cannot. That is the 
truth. It takes one’s breath away. At the mere 
thought of it I feel as if I were getting out of my 
depth.” 

“We have been out of our depths the last month,” 
admitted Barebone, curtly. 

And he stood reflecting, while Colville watched 
him. 

“If I go on,” he said, at length, “I go on alone.” 

“Better not,” urged Colville, with a laugh of great 
relief. “For you would always have me and my 
knowledge hanging over you. If you succeeded, you 
would have me dunning you for hush-money.” 

Which seemed true enough. Few men knew more 
of one side of human nature than Dormer Colville, 
it would appear. 

“I am not afraid of that.” 

“You can never tell,” laughed Colville, but his 
laugh rather paled under Barebone’ s glance. “You 
can never tell.” 

“Wise men do not attempt to blackmail — kings.” 

And Colville caught his breath. 

“Perhaps you are right,” he admitted, after a pause. 
“You seem to be taking to the position very kindly, 
Barebone. But I do not mind, you know. It does 
not matter what we say to each other, eh ? We have 
been good friends so long. You musfdo as you like. 

246 


DROPPING THE PILOT 


And if you succeed, I must be content to leave my 
share of the matter to your consideration. You cer- 
tainly seem to know the business already, and some 
day perhaps you will remember who taught you to 
be a king.” 

“It was an old North Sea skipper who taught me 
that,” replied Barebone. “That is one of the things 
I learnt at sea.” 

“Yes — yes,” agreed Colville, almost nervously. 
“And you will go on with the thing, will you not? 
Like a good fellow, eh ? Think about it till to-morrow 
morning. I will go now. Which is my candle ? Yes. 
You will think about it. Da not jump to any hasty 
decision.” 

He hurried to the door as he spoke. He could 
not understand Barebone at all. 

“If I do go on with it,” was the reply, “it will not 
be in response to any of your arguments. It will be 
only and solely for the sake of France.” 

“Yes — of course,” agreed Colville, and closed the 
door behind him. 

In his own room he turned and looked toward the 
door leading through to that from which he had hur- 
riedly escaped. He passed his hand across his face, 
which was white and moist. 

“For the sake of France !” he echoed in bewilder- 
ment. “For the sake of France! Gad! I believe he 
is the man after all.” 


247 


CHAPTER XXIII 


A SIMPLE BANKER 

Mr. John Turner had none of the outward signs 
of the discreet adviser in his person or surroundings. 
He had, it was currently whispered, inherited from 
his father an enormous clientele of noble names. And 
to such as have studied the history of Paris during the 
whole of the nineteenth century, it will appear readily 
comprehensible that the careful or the penniless should 
give preference to an English hanker. 

Mr. Turner’s appearance suggested solidity, and 
the carpet of his private room was a good one. The 
room smelt of cigar smoke, while the office, through 
which the client must pass to reach it, was odorifer- 
ous of ancient ledgers. 

Half a dozen clerks were seated in the office, which 
was simply furnished and innocent of iron safes. If 
a client entered, one of the six, whose business it was, 
looked up, while the other five continued to give their 
attention to the hooks before them. 

One cold morning, toward the end of the year, 
Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence was admitted by the con- 
248 


A SIMPLE BANKER 


cierge. She noted that only one clerk gave heed to 
her entry, and, it is to be presumed, the quiet perfec- 
tion of her furs. 

“Of the six young men in your office,” she ob- 
served, when she was seated in the bare wooden chair 
placed invitingly by the side of John Turner’s writ- 
ing-table, “only one appears to be in full possession 
of his senses.” 

J ohn Turner, sitting — if the expression be allowed 
— in a heap in an arm-chair before a table provided 
with pens, ink, and a blotting-pad, but otherwise bare, 
looked at his client with a bovine smile. 

“I don’t pay them to admire my clients,” he re- 
plied. 

“If Mademoiselle de Montijo came in, I suppose 
the other five would not look up.” 

John Turner settled himself a little lower into his 
chair, so that he appeared to be in some danger of 
slipping under the table. 

“If the Archangel Gabriel came in, they would 
still attend to their business,” he replied, in his thick, 
slow voice. “But he won’t. He is not one of my 
clients. Quite the contrary.” 

Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence smoothed the fur that 
bordered her neat jacket and glanced sideways at her 
banker. Then she looked round the room. It was 
bare enough. A single picture hung on the wall — a 
portrait of an old lady. Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence 
249 


THE LAST HOPE 


raised her eyebrows, and continued her scrutiny. 
Here, again, was no iron safe. There were no ledg- 
ers, no diaries, no note-books, no paraphernalia of 
business. Nothing but a bare table and John Turner 
seated at it, in a much more comfortable chair than 
that provided for the client, staring apathetically at 
a date-case which stood on a bare mantelpiece. 

The lady’s eyes returned to the portrait on the wall. 

“You used to have a portrait of Louis Philippe 
there,” she said. 

“When Louis Philippe was on the throne,” ad- 
mitted the banker. 

“And now ?” inquired this daughter of Eve, looking 
at the portrait. 

“My maternal aunt,” replied Turner, making a 
gesture with two fingers, as if introducing his client 
to the portrait. 

“You keep her, one may suppose, as a stop-gap — 
between the dynasties. It is so safe — a maternal 
aunt !” 

“One cannot hang a republic on the wall, however 
much one may want to.” 

“Then you are a Koyalist?” inquired Mrs. St. 
Pierre Lawrence. 

“No; I am only a banker,” replied Turner, with 
his chin sinking lower on his bulging waistcoat and 
his eyes scarcely visible beneath the heavy lids. 

The remark, coupled with a thought that Turner 
250 


A SIMPLE BANKER 

was going to sleep, seemed to remind the client of her 
business. 

“Will you kindly ask one of your clerks to let me 
know how much money I have/’ she said, casting a 
glance not wholly innocent of scornful reproach at the 
table, so glaringly devoid of the bare necessities of a 
banking business. 

“Only eleven thousand francs and fourteen sous,” 
replied Turner, with a promptness which seemed to 
suggest that he kept no diary or note-book on the table 
before him because he had need of neither. 

“I feel sure I must have more than that,” said Mrs. 
St. Pierre Lawrence, with some spirit. “I quite 
thought I had.” 

But John Turner only moistened his lips and sat 
patiently gazing at the date. His attitude dimly sug- 
gested — quite in a nice way — that the chair upon 
which Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence sat was polished 
bright by the garments of persons who had found 
themselves labouring under the same error. 

“Well, I must have a hundred thousand francs to- 
morrow; that is all. Simply must. And in notes, 
too. I told you I should want it when you came to 
see me at Roy an. You must remember. I told you 
at luncheon.” 

“When we were eating a sweetbread aux champig- 
nons. I remember perfectly. We do not get sweet- 
breads like that in Paris.” 

251 


THE LAST HOPE 


And John Turner shook his head sadly. 

“Well, will you let me have the money to-morrow 
morning — in notes V ’ 

“I remember I advised you not to sell just now; 
after we had finished the sweetbread and had gone on 
to a creme renversee — very good one, too. Yes, it is 
a bad time to sell. Things are uncertain in France 
just now. One cannot even get one’s meals properly 
served. Cook’s head is full of politics, I suppose.” 

“To-morrow morning — in notes,” repeated Mrs. 
St. Pierre Lawrence. 

“How, your man at Roy an was excellent ; kept his 
head all through; and a light hand, too. Got him 
with you in Paris ?” 

“Ho, I have not. To-morrow morning, about ten 
o’clock — in notes.” 

And Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence tapped a neat gloved 
finger on the corner of the table with some determina- 
tion. 

“I remember — at dessert — you told me you wanted 
to realise a considerable sum of money at the begin- 
ning of the year, to put into some business venture. 
Is this part of that sum ?” 

“Yes,” returned the lady, arranging her veil. 

“A venture of Dormer Colville’s, I think you told 
me — while we were having coffee. One never gets 
coffee hot enough in a private house, but yours was 
all right.” 


252 


A SIMPLE BANKEB 


“Yes,” mumbled Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, behind 
her quick finger, busy with the veil. 

Beneath the sleepy lids John Turner’s eyes, which 
were small and deep-sunken in the flesh, like the eyes 
of a pig, noted in passing that his client’s cheeks were 
momentarily pink. 

“I hope you don’t mean to suggest that there is 
anything unsafe in Mr. Colville as a business man?” 

“Heaven forbid!” ejaculated Turner. “On the 
contrary, he is most enterprising. And I know no 
one who smokes a better cigar than Colville — when 
he can get it. And the young fellow seemed nice 
enough.” 

“Which young fellow ?” inquired the lady, sharply. 

“His young friend — the man who was with him. 
I think you told me, after luncheon, that Colville re- 
quired the money to start his young friend in busi- 
ness.” 

“Never !” laughed Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, who, 
if she felt momentarily uneasy, was quickly re- 
assured. For this was one of those fortunate ladies 
who go through life with the comforting sense of be- 
ing always cleverer than their neighbour. If the 
neighbour happen to be a man, and a stout one, the 
conviction is the stronger for those facts. “Never ! I 
never told you that. You must have dreamt it.” 

“Perhaps I did,” admitted the banker, placidly. 
“I am afraid I often feel sleepy after luncheon. Per- 
253 


THE LAST HOPE 

haps I dreamt it. But I could not hand such a sum 
in notes to an unprotected lady, even if I can effect 
a sale of your securities so quickly as to have the 
money ready by to-morrow morning. Perhaps Col- 
ville will call for it himself.” 

“If he is in Paris.” 

“Everyone is in Paris now,” was Mr. Turner’s 
opinion. “And if he likes to bring his young friend 
with him, all the better. In these uncertain times it 
is not fair on a man to hand to him a large sum of 
money in notes.” He paused and jerked his thumb 
toward the window, which was a double one, looking 
down into the Hue Lafayette. “There are always 
people in the streets watching those who pass in and 
out of a bank. If a man comes out smiling, with his 
hand on his pocket, he is followed, and if an opportu- 
nity occurs, he is robbed. Better not have it in 
notes.” 

“I know,” replied Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, not 
troubling further to deceive one so lethargic and sim- 
ple. “I know that Dormer wants it in notes.” 

“Then let him come and fetch it.” 

Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence rose from her chair and 
shook her dress into straighter folds, with the air of 
having accomplished a task which she had known to 
be difficult, hut not impossible to one equipped with 
wit and self-confidence. 

“You will sell the securities, and have it all ready 
254 


A SIMPLE BANKER 


by ten o’clock to-morrow morning,” she repeated, with 
a feminine insistence. 

“You shall have the money to-morrow morning, 
whether I succeed in selling for cash or not,” was 
the reply, and John Turner concealed a yawn with 
imperfect success. 

“A loan?” 

“No banker lends — except to kings,” replied 
Turner, stolidly. “Call it an accommodation.” 

Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence glanced at him sharply 
over the fur collar which she was clasping round her 
neck. Here was a banker, reputed wealthy, who sat 
in a bare room, without so much as a fireproof safe 
to suggest riches; a business man of world-wide af- 
fairs, who drummed indolent fingers on a bare table ; 
a philosopher with a maxim ever ready to teach, as 
all maxims do, cowardice in the guise of prudence, 
selfishness masquerading as worldly wisdom, hard- 
heartedness passing for foresight. Here was one who 
seemed to see, and was yet too sleepy to perceive. Mrs. 
St. Pierre Lawrence was not always sure of her 
banker, but now, as ever before, one glance at his 
round, heavy face reassured her. She laughed and 
went away, well satisfied with the knowledge, only 
given to faomen, of having once more carried out her 
object with the completeness which is known as twist- 
ing round the little finger. 

She nodded to John Turner, who had ponderously 

255 


THE LAST HOPE 

risen from the chair which was more comfortable than 
the client’s seat, and held the door open for her to 
pass. He glanced at the clock as he did so. And she 
knew that he was thinking that it was nearly the 
luncheon hour, so transparent to the feminine per- 
ception are the thoughts of men. 

When he had closed the door he returned to his 
writing-table. Like many stout people, he moved 
noiselessly, and quickly enough when the occasion de- 
manded haste. 

He wrote three letters in a very few minutes, and, 
when they were addressed, he tapped on the table with 
the end of his pen-holder, which brought, in the twin- 
kling of an eye, that clerk whose business it was to 
abandon his books when called. 

“I shall not go out to luncheon until I have the 
written receipt for each one of those letters,” said 
the banker, knowing that until he went out to lunch- 
eon his six clerks must needs go hungry. “Not an 
answer,” he explained, “but a receipt in the ad- 
dressee’s writing.” 

And while the clerk hurried from the room and 
down the stone stairs at a break-neck speed, Turner 
sank back into his chair, with lustreless eyes fixed on 
space. 

“No one can wait,” he was in the habit of saying, 
“better than I can.” 


256 


CHAPTER XXIV 


THE LANE OF MANY TURNINGS 

If John Turner expected Colville to bring Loo 
Barebone with him to the Rue Lafayette he was, in 
part, disappointed. Colville arrived in a hired car- 
riage, of which the blinds were partially lowered. 

The driver had been instructed to drive into the 
roomy court-yard of the house of which Turner’s office 
occupied the first floor. Carriages frequently waited 
there, by the side of a little fountain which splashed 
all day and all night into a circular basin. 

Colville descended from the carriage and turned to 
speak to Loo, who was left sitting within it. Since 
the unfortunate night at the Hotel Gemosac, when 
they had been on the verge of a quarrel, a certain 
restraint had characterised their intercourse. Col- 
ville was shy of approaching the subject upon which 
they had differed. His easy laugh had not laughed 
away the grim fact that he had deceived Loo in such 
a manner that complicity was practically forced upon 
an innocent man. 

Loo had not given his decision yet. He had waited 
a week, during which time Colville had not dared to 

257 


THE LAST HOPE 


ask him whether his mind was made up. There was 
a sort of recklessness in Loo’s manner which at once 
puzzled and alarmed his mentor. At times he was 
gay, as he always had been, and in the midst of his 
gaiety he would turn away with a gloomy face and go 
to his own room. 

To press the question would be to precipitate a 
catastrophe. Dormer Colville decided to go on as 
if nothing had happened. It is a compromise with 
the inconveniences of untruth to which we must all 
resort at some crisis or another in life. 

“I will not be long,” he assured Barebone, with a 
gay laugh. The prospect of handling one hundred 
thousand francs in notes was perhaps exhilarating; 
though the actual possession of great wealth would 
seem to be of the contrary tendency. There is a pro- 
found melancholy peculiar to the face of the million- 
aire. “I shall not be long; for he is a man of his 
word, and the money will be ready.” 

John Turner was awaiting his visitor, and gave a 
large soft hand inertly into Colville’s warm grasp. 

“I always wish I saw more of you,” said the new- 
comer. 

“Is there not enough of me already ?” inquired the 
banker, pointing to the vacant chair, upon which fell 
the full light of the double window. A smaller win- 
dow opposite to it afforded a view of the court-yard. 
And it was at this smaller window that Colville 
258 


THE LANE OF MANY TURNINGS 

glanced as he sat down, with a pause indicative of 
reluctance. 

Turner saw the glance and noted the reluctance. 
He concluded, perhaps, in the slow, sure mind that 
worked behind his little peeping eyes, that Loo Bare- 
bone was in the carriage in the court-yard, and that 
Colville was anxious to return to him as soon as pos- 
sible. 

“It is very kind of you to say that, I am sure,” 
pursued Turner, rousing himself to be pleasant and 
conversational. “But, although the loss is mine, my 
dear Colville, the fault is mostly yours. You always 
know where to find me when you want my society. 
I am anchored in this chair, whereas one never knows 
where one has a butterfly like yourself.” 

“A butterfly that is getting a bit heavy on the 
wing,” answered Colville, with his wan and sympa- 
thetic smile. He sat forward in the chair in an atti- 
tude antipathetic to digression from the subject in 
hand. 

“I do not see any evidence of that. One hears of 
you here and there in France. I suppose, for in- 
stance, you know more than any man in Paris at the 
present moment of the — ” he paused and suppressed 
a yawn, “the — er — vintage. Anything in it — eh ?” 

“So far as I could judge, the rains came too late ; 
but I shall be glad to tell you all about it another 
time. This morning ” 


259 


TFIE LAST HOPE 


“Yes ; I know. You want your money. I have it 
all ready for you. But I must make out some sort 
of receipt, you know.” 

Turner felt vaguely in his pocket, and at last found 
a letter, from which he tore the blank sheet, while 
his companion, glancing from time to time at the win- 
dow, watched him impatiently. 

“Seems to me,” said Turner, opening his inkstand, 
“that the vintage of 1850 will not be drunk by a Re- 
public.” 

“Ah ! indeed.” 

“What do you think ?” 

“Well, to tell you the truth, my mind was more 
occupied in the quality of the vintage than in its ulti- 
mate fate. If you make out a receipt on behalf of 
Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, I will sign it,” answered 
Colville, fingering the blotting-paper. 

“Received on behalf of, and for, Mrs. St. Pierre 
Lawrence, the sum of one hundred thousand francs,” 
muttered the banker, as he wrote. 

“She is only a client, you understand, my dear 
Colville,” he went on, holding out his hand for the 
blotting-paper, “or I would not part with the money 
so easily. It is against my advice that Mrs. St. Pierre 
Lawrence realises this sum.” 

“If a woman sets her heart on a thing, my dear 
fellow — ” began Colville, carelessly. 

“Yes, I know — reason goes to the wall. Sign there, 
will you ?” 


260 


THE LANE OF MANY TURNINGS 

Turner handed him pen and receipt, but Colville 
was looking toward the window sunk deep in the wall 
on the inner side of the room. This was not a double 
window, and the sound of carriage wheels rose above 
the gentle, continuous plash of the little fountain in 
the court-yard. 

Colville rose from his seat, but to reach the window 
he had to pass behind Turner’s chair. Turner rose 
at the same moment, and pushed his chair back against 
the wall in doing so. This passage toward the win- 
dow being completely closed by the bulk of John 
Turner, Colville hurried round the writing-table. 
But Turner was again in front of him, and, without 
appearing to notice that his companion was literally 
at his heels, he opened a large cupboard sunk in the 
panelling of the wall. The door of it folded back 
over the little window, completely hiding it. 

Turning on his heel, with an agility which was 
quite startling in one so stout, he found Colville’s 
colourless face two feet from his own. In fact, Col- 
ville almost stumbled against him. For a moment 
they looked each other in the eyes in silence. With 
his right hand, John Turner held the cupboard-door 
over the window. 

“I have the money here,” he said, “in this cup- 
board.” And as he spoke, a hollow rumble, echoing 
in the court-yard, marked the exit of a carriage under 
the archway into the Rue Lafayette. There had been 
261 


THE LAST HOPE 


only one carriage in attendance in the court-yard — 
that in which Colville had left Barebone. 

“Here, in this cupboard,” repeated Turner to un- 
heeding ears. For Dormer Colville was already 
hurrying across the room toward the other window 
that looked out into the Kue Lafayette. The house 
was a lofty one, with a high entresol, and from the 
windows of the first floor it was not possible to see 
the street immediately below without opening the 
sashes. 

Turner closed the cupboard and locked it, without 
ceasing to watch Colville, who was struggling with 
the stiff fastening of the outer sash. 

“Anything the matter ?” inquired the banker, pla- 
cidly. “Lost a dog?” 

But Colville had at length wrenched open the win- 
dow and was leaning out. The roar of the traffic 
drowned any answer he may have made. It was 
manifest that the loss of three precious minutes had 
made him too late. After a glance down into the 
street, he came back into the centre of the room and 
snatched up his hat from Turner’s bare writing- 
table. 

He hurried to the door, but turned again, with his 
back against it, to face his companion, with the eyes 
usually so affable and sympathetic, ablaze for once 
with rage. 

“Damn you !” he cried. “Damn you !” 

262 


THE LANE OF MANY TURNINGS 


And the door banged on his heels as he hurried 
through the outer office. 

Turner was left standing, a massive incarnation 
of bewilderment, in the middle of the room. He 
heard the outer door close with considerable emphasis. 
Then he sat down again, his eyebrows raised high 
on his round forehead, and gazed sadly at the date- 
card. 

Colville had left Loo Barebone seated in the hired 
carriage in a frame of mind far from satisfactory. 
A seafaring life, more than any other, teaches a man 
quickness in action. A hundred times a day the sailor 
needs to execute, with a rapidity impossible to the 
landsman, that which knowledge tells him to he the 
imminent necessity of the moment. At sea, life is so 
far simpler than in towns that there are only two 
ways : the right and the wrong. In the devious paths 
of a pavement-ridden man there are a hundred by- 
ways: there is the long, long lane of many turnings 
called Compromise. 

Loo Barebone had turned into this lane one night 
at the Hotel Gemosac, in the Ruelle St. Jacob, and 
had wandered there ever since. Captain Clubbe had 
taught him the two ways of seamanship effectively 
enough. But the education fell short of the necessi- 
ties of this crisis. Moreover, Barebone had in his 
veins blood of a race which had fallen to low estate 
through Compromise and Delay. 

263 


THE LAST HOPE 

Let man or woman throw the first stone at him 
who have seen the right way gaping before their feet 
with a hundred pitfalls and barriers, apparently in- 
surmountable, and have resolutely taken that road. 
For the devious path of Compromise has this merit : 
that the obstacles are round the corner. 

Barebone, absorbed in thought, hardly noticed that 
the driver of his carriage descended from the box and 
lounged toward the archway, where the hum of traffic 
and the passage of many people would serve to be- 
guile a long wait. After a minute’s delay, a driver 
returned and climbed to the seat — but it was not the 
same driver. He wore the same coat and hat, but a 
different face looked out from the sheep-skin collar 
turned up to the ears. There was no one in the court- 
yard to notice this trifling change. Barebone was not 
even looking out of the window. He had never 
glanced at the cabman’s face, whose vehicle had hap- 
pened to be lingering at the corner of the Ruelle St. 
J acob when Colville and his companion had emerged 
from the high doorway of the Hotel Gemosac. 

Barebone was so far obeying instructions that he 
was leaning back in the carriage, his face half hidden 
by the collar of his coat. For it was a cold morning 
in mid-winter. He hardly looked up when the handle 
of the door was turned. Colville had shut this door 
five minutes earlier, promising to return immediately. 
It was undoubtedly his hand that opened the door. 

264 


THE LANE OF MANY TURNINGS 

But suddenly Barebone sat up. Both doors were 
open. 

Before he could make another movement, two men 
stepped quietly into the carriage, each closing the 
door by which he had entered quickly and noiselessly. 
One seated himself beside Barebone, the other oppo- 
site to him; and each drew down a blind. They 
seemed to have rehearsed the actions over and over 
again, so that there was no hitch or noise or bungling. 
The whole was executed as if by clock-work, and the 
carriage moved away the instant the doors were 
closed. 

In the twilight, within the carriage, the two men 
grasped Loo Barebone, each by one arm, and held him 
firmly against the back of the carriage. 

“Quietly, mon bon monsieur ; quietly, and you will 
come to no harm.” 

Barebone made no resistance, and only laughed. 

“You have come too soon,” he said, without at- 
tempting to free his arms, which were held, as if by 
a vice, at the elbow and shoulder. “You have come 
too soon, gentlemen ! There is no money in the car- 
riage. Not so much as a sou.” 

“It is not for money that we have come,” replied 
the man who had first spoken ; and the absolute silence 
of his companion was obviously the silence of a sub- 
ordinate. “Though, for a larger sum than monsieur 
is likely to offer, one might make a mistake, and allow 
of escape — who knows?” 

265 


THE LAST HOPE 


The remark was made with the cynical honesty of 
dishonesty which had so lately been introduced into 
France by him who was now Dictator of that facile 
people. 

“Oh ! I offer nothing,” replied Barebone. “For a 
good reason. I have nothing to offer. If you are 
not thieves, what are you ?” 

The carriage was rattling along the Rue Lafayette, 
over the cobble-stones ; and the inmates, though their 
faces were close together, had to shout in order to be 
heard. 

“Of the police,” was the reply. “Of the high po- 
lice. I fancy that monsieur’s affair is political ?” 

“Why should you fancy that ?” 

“Because my comrade and I are not engaged on 
other cases. The criminal receives very different 
treatment. Permit me to assure you of that. And 
no consideration whatever. The common police is so 
unmannerly. There ! — one may well release the 
arms — since we understand each other.” 

“I shall not try to escape — if that is what you 
mean,” replied Barebone, with a laugh. 

“Nothing else — nothing else,” his affable captor 
assured him. 

And for the remainder of a long drive through the 
noisy streets the three men sat upright in the dim and 
musty cab in silence. 


266 


CHAPTER XXV, 


SANS RANCUNE 

A large French fishing-lugger was drifting north- 
ward on the ebb tide with its sails flapping idly against 
the spars. It had been a fine morning, and the Cap- 
tain, a man from Fecamp, where every boy that is 
born is born a sailor, had been fortunate in working 
his way in clear weather across the banks that lie 
northward of the Thames. 

He had predicted all along in a voice rendered 
husky by much shouting in dirty weather that the 
fog-banks would be drifting in from the sea before 
nightfall. And now he had that mournful satisfac- 
tion which is the special privilege of the pessimistic. 
These fog-banks, the pest of the east coast, are the 
materials that form the light fleecy clouds which drift 
westward in sunny weather like a gauze veil across 
the face of the sky. They roll across the Xorth Sea 
from their home in the marshes of Holland on the 
face of the waters, and the mariner, groping his way 
with dripping eyelashes and a rosy face through them, 
can look up and see the blue sky through the rifts 
267 


THE LAST HOPE 


overhead. When the fog-bank touches land it rises, 
slowly lifted by the warm breath of the field. 

On the coast-line it lies low ; a mile inland it begins 
to break into rifts, so that anyone working his way 
down one of the tidal rivers, sails in the counting of 
twenty seconds from sunshine into a pearly shadow. 
Five miles inland there is a transparent veil across 
the blue sky slowly sweeping toward the west, and 
rising all the while, until those who dwell on the 
higher lands of Essex and Suffolk perceive nothing 
but a few fleecy clouds high in the heavens. 

The lugger was hardly moving, for the tide had 
only turned half an hour ago. 

“Provided,” the Captain had muttered within the 
folds of his woollen scarf rolled round and round his 
neck until it looked like a dusky life-belt — “provided 
that they are ringing their bell on the Shipwash, 
we shall find our way into the open. Always sea- 
sick, this traveller, always sea-sick!” 

And he turned with a kindly laugh to Loo Bare- 
bone, who was lying on a heap of old sails by the 
stern rail, concealing as well as he could the pangs 
of a consuming hunger. 

“One sees that you will never be a sailor,” added 
the man from Fecamp, with that rough humour which 
sailors use. 

“Perhaps I do not want to be one,” replied Bare- 
bone, with a ready gaiety which had already made 
268 


SANS KANCUNE 


him several friends on this tarry vessel, although the 
voyage had lasted hut four days. 

“Listen,” interrupted the Captain, holding up a 
mittened hand. “Listen ! I hear a bell, or else it is 
my conscience.” 

Barebone had heard it for some time. It was the 
bell-buoy at the mouth of Harwich River. But he 
did not deem it necessary for one who was a prisoner 
on board, and no sailor, to interfere in the navigation 
of a vessel now making its way to the Faroe fisheries 
for the twentieth time. 

“My conscience,” he observed, “rings louder than 
that.” 

The Captain took a turn round the tiller with a 
rope made fast to the rail for the purpose, and went 
to the side of the ship, lifting his nose toward the 
west. 

“It is the land,” he said. “I can smell it. But it 
is only the Blessed Virgin who knows where we are.” 

He turned and gave a gruff order to a man half 
hidden in the mist in the waist of the boat to try a 
heave of the lead. 

The sound of the bell could be heard clearly enough 
now — the uncertain, hesitating clang of a bell-buoy 
rocked in the tideway — with its melancholy note of 
warning. Indeed, there are few sounds on sea or 
land more fraught with lonesomeness and fear. Be- 
hind it and beyond it a faint “tap-tap” was now audi- 
269 


THE LAST HOPE 

ble. Barebone knew it to be the sound of a caulker’s 
hammer in the Government repairing yard on the 
south side. They were drifting past the mouth of 
the Harwich River. 

The leadsman called out a depth which Loo could 
have told without the help of line or lead. For he 
had served a long apprenticeship on these coasts un- 
der a captain second to none in the North Sea. 

He turned a little on his bed of sails under repair, 
at which the Captain had been plying his needle while 
the weather remained clear, and glanced over his 
shoulder toward the ship’s dingey towing astern. The 
rope that held it was made fast round the rail a few 
feet away from him. The boat itself was clumsy, 
shaped like a walnut, of a preposterous strength and 
weight. It was fitted with a short, stiff mast and 
a balance lug-sail. It floated more lightly on the 
water than the bigger vessel, which was laden with 
coal and provender and salt for the North Atlantic 
fishery, and the painter hung loose, while the dingey, 
tide-borne, sidled up to stern of its big companion 
like a kitten following its mother with the uncertain 
steps of infancy.. 

The face of the water was glassy and of a yellow 
green. Although the scud swept in toward the land 
at a fair speed, there was not enough wind to fill the 
sails. Moreover, the bounty of Holland seemed in- 
exhaustible. There was more to come. This fog- 
270 


SANS RANCUNE 


bank lay on the water half-way across the North Sea, 
and the brief winter sun having failed to disperse it, 
was now sinking to the west, cold and pale. 

“The water seems shallow,” said Barebone to the 
Captain. “What would you do if the ship went 
aground ?” 

“We should stay there, mon bon monsieur, until 
someone came to help us at the flood tide. We should 
shout until they heard us.” 

“You might fire a gun,” suggested Barebone. 

“We have no gun on board, mon bon monsieur,” 
replied the Captain, who had long ago explained to 
his prisoner that there was no ill-feeling. 

“It is the fortune of war,” he had explained before 
the white cliffs of St. Valerie had faded from sight. 
“I am a poor man who cannot afford to refuse a good 
offer. It is a Government job, as you no doubt know 
without my telling you. You would seem to have in- 
curred the displeasure or the distrust of someone high 
placed in the Government. Treat him well/ they 
said to me. ‘Give him your best, and see that he 
comes to no harm unless he tries to escape. And be 
careful that he does not return to France before the 
mackerel fishing begins.’ And when we do return 
to Fecamp, I have to lie to off Notre Dame de la 
Garde and signal to the Douane that I have you safe. 
They want you out of the w ? ay. You are a dangerous 
man, it seems. Salut !” 


271 


THE LAST HOPE 


And the Captain raised his glass to one so distin- 
guished by Government. He laughed as he set his 
glass down on the little cabin table. 

“No ill-feeling on either side,” he added. “C’est 
entendu.” 

He made a half-movement as if to shake hands 
across the table and thought better of it, remember- 
ing, perhaps, that his own palm was not innocent of 
blood-money. For the rest they had been friendly 
enough on the voyage. And had the “Petite J eanne” 
been in danger, it is probable that Barebone would 
have warned his jailer, if only in obedience to a sea- 
man’s instinct against throwing away a good ship. 

He had noted every detail, however, of the dingey 
while she lay on the deck of the “Petite Jeanne”; 
how the runner fitted to the mast; whether the hall- 
iards were likely to run sweetly through the sheaves 
or were knotted and would jamb. He knew the 
weight of the gaff and the great tan-soddened sail to 
a nicety. Some dark night, he had thought on the 
Dogger, he would slip overboard and take his chance. 
He had never looked for thick weather at this time 
of year off the Banks, so near home, within a few 
hours’ sail of the mouth of Farlingford River. 

If a breeze would only come up from the southeast, 
as it almost always does in these waters toward the 
evening of a still, fine day! Without lifting his 
head he scanned the weather, noting that the scud 
272 


SANS RANCUNE 


was blowing more northward now. It might only be 
what is known as a slant. On the other hand, it might 
prove to be a true breeze, coming from the usual 
quarter. The “tap-tap” of the caulker’s hammer on 
the slip-way in Harwich River was silent now. There 
must be a breeze in-shore that carried the sound 
away. 

The topsail of the “Petite Jeanne” filled with a 
jerk, and the Captain, standing at the tiller, looked 
up at it. The lower sails soon took their cue, and 
suddenly the slack sheets hummed taut in the breeze. 
The “Petite Jeanne” answered to it at once, and the 
waves gurgled and laughed beneath her counter as 
she moved through the water. She could sail quicker 
than her dingey: Barebone knew that. But he also 
knew that he could handle an open boat as few even 
on the Cotes-du-Nord knew how. 

If the breeze came strong, it would blow the fog- 
bank away, and Barebone had need of its covert. 
Though there must be many English boats within 
sight should the fog lift — indeed, the guardship in 
Harwich harbour would be almost visible across the 
spit of land where Landguard Port lies hidden — 
Barebone had no intention of asking help so compro- 
mising. He had but a queer story to tell to any in 
authority, and on the face of it he must perforce ap- 
pear to have run away with the dingey of the “Petite 
Jeanne.” 


273 


THE LAST HOPE 


He desired to get ashore as unobtrusively as pos- 
sible. For he was not going to stay in England. The 
die was cast now. Where Dormer Colville’s persua- 
sions had failed, where the memory of that journey 
through Royalist France had yet left him doubting, 
the incidents of the last few days had clinched the 
matter once for all. Barebone was going back to 
F ranee. 

He moved as if to stretch his limbs and lay down 
once more, with his shoulders against the rail and 
his elbow covering the stanchion round which the 
dingey’s painter was made fast. 

The proper place for the dingey w T as on deck should 
the breeze freshen. Barebone knew that as well as 
the French Captain of the “Petite Jeanne.” For sea- 
manship is like music — it is independent of language 
or race. There is only one right way and one wrong 
way at sea, all the world over. The dingey was only 
towing behind while the fog continued to be impene- 
trable. At any moment the Captain might give the 
order to bring it inboard. 

At any moment Barebone might have to make a 
dash for the boat. 

He watched the Captain, who continued to steer in 
silence. To drift on the tide in a fog is a very differ- 
ent thing to sailing through it at ten miles an hour 
on a strong breeze, and the steersman had no thought 
to spare for anything but his sails. Two men were 
274 


SANS RANCUNE 


keeping the look-out in the bows. Another — the 
leadsman — was standing amidships peering over the 
side into the mist. 

Still Barebone waited. Captain Clubbe had taught 
him that most difficult art — to select with patience 
and a perfect judgment the right moment. The 
“Petite Jeanne” was rustling through the glassy 
water northward toward Farlingford. 

At a word from the Captain the man who had 
been heaving the lead came aft to the ship’s bell and 
struck ten quick strokes. He waited and repeated 
the warning, but no one answered. They w r ere alone 
in these shallow channels. Fortunately the man 
faced forward, as sailors always do by instinct, turn- 
ing his back upon the Captain and Barebone. 

The painter was cast off now and, under his elbow, 
Barebone was slowly hauling in. The dingey was 
heavy and the “Petite Jeanne” was moving quickly 
through the water. Suddenly Barebone rose to his 
feet, hauled in hand over hand, and when the dingey 
was near enough leaped across two yards of water to 
her gunwale. 

The Captain heard the thud of his feet on the 
thwart, and looking back over his shoulder saw and 
understood in a flash of thought. But even then he 
did not understand that Loo was aught else but a 
landsman half-recovered from sea-sickness. He un- 
derstood it a minute later, however, when the brown 
275 


THE LAST HOPE 


sail ran up the mast and, holding the tiller between 
his knees, Barebone hauled in the sheet hand over 
hand and steered a course out to sea. 

He looked back over the foot of the sail and waved 
his hand. 

“Sans rancune!” he shouted. “(Test entendu!” 
The Captain’s own words. 

The “Petite Jeanne” was already round to the 
wind and the Captain was bellowing to his crew to 
trim the sails. It could scarcely be a chase, for the 
huge deep-sea fishing-boat could sail half as fast 
again as her own dingey. The Captain gave his in- 
structions with all the quickness of his race, and the 
men were not slow to carry them out. The safe- 
keeping of the prisoner had been made of personal 
advantage to each member of the crew. 

The Captain hailed Barebone with winged words 
which need not be set down here, and explained to 
him the impossibility of escape. 

“How can you — a landsman,” he shouted, “hope 
to get away from us? Come back and it shall be as 
you say, ‘sans rancune.’ Name of God ! I bear you 
no ill-will for making the attempt.” 

They were so close together that all on board the 
“Petite Jeanne” could see Barebone laugh and shake 
his head. He knew that there was no gun on board 
the fishing-boat. The lugger rushed on, sailing 
quicker, lying up closer to the wind. She was within 

276 


SANS BANCUNE 

twenty yards of the little boat now — would overhaul 
her in a minute. 

But in an instant Barebone was round on the other 
tack, and the Captain swore aloud, for he knew now 
that he was not dealing with a landsman. The 
“Petite Jeanne” spun round almost as quickly, but 
not quite. Every time that Barebone put about, the 
“Petite Jeanne” must perforce do the same, and 
every time she lost a little in the manoeuvre. On a 
long tack or running before the wind the bigger 
boat was immeasurably superior. Barebone had but 
one chance — to make short tacks — and he knew it. 
The Captain knew it also, and no landsman would 
have possessed the knowledge. He was trying to 
run the boat down now. 

Barebone might succeed in getting far enough 
away to be lost in the fog. But in tacking so fre- 
quently he was liable to make a mistake. The bigger 
boat was not so likely to miss stays. He passed so 
close to her that he could read the figures cut on her 
stern-post indicating her draught of water. 

There was another chance. The “Petite Jeanne” 
was drawing six feet; the dingey could sail across a 
shoal covered by eighteen inches of water. But such 
a shoal would be clearly visible on the surface of the 
w T ater. Besides, there was no shallow like that nearer 
than the Goodwins. Barebone pressed out seaward. 
He knew every channel and every bank between the 
277 


THE LAST HOPE 


Thames and Thorpe-Ness. He kept on pressing out 
to sea by short tacks. All the while he was peeping 
over the gunwale out of the corner of his eye. He 
was near, he must be near, a bank covered by five 
feet of water at low tide. A shoal of five feet is 
rarely visible, on the surface. 

Suddenly he rose from his seat on the gunwale 
and stood with the tiller in one hand and the sheet 
in the other, half turning back to look at “Petite 
Jeanne” towering almost over him. And as he 
looked, her bluff black bows rose upward with an 
odd climbing movement like a horse stepping up a 
bank. With a rattle of ropes and blocks she stood 
still. 

Barebone went about again and sailed past her. 

“Sans rancune!” he shouted. But no one heeded 
him, for they had other matters to attend to. And 
the dingey sailed into the veil of the mist toward the 
land. 


278 


CHAPTER XXVI 


RETURNED EMPTY 

The breeze freshened, and, as was to be expected, 
blew the fog-bank away before sunset. 

Sep Marvin had been an unwilling student all day. 
Like many of his cloth and generation, Parson Mar- 
vin pinned all his faith on education. “Give a boy a 
good education,” he said, a hundred times. “Make 
a gentleman of him, and you have done your duty 
by him.” 

“Make a gentleman of him — and the world will be 
glad to feed and clothe him,” was the real thought 
in his mind, as it was in the mind of nearly all his 
contemporaries. The wildest dreamer of those days 
never anticipated that, in the passage of one brief 
generation, social advancement should be for the 
shrewdly ignorant rather than for the scholar: that 
it would be better for a man that his mind be stored 
with knowledge of the world than the wisdom of the 
classics : that the successful grocer might find a kinder 
welcome in a palace than the scholar: that the manu- 
facturer of kitchen utensils might feed with kings 
279 


THE LAST HOPE 

and speak to them, without aspirates, between the 
courses. 

Parson Marvin knew none of these things, however ; 
nor suspected that the advance of civilisation is not 
always progressive, but that she may take hands with 
vulgarity and dance down-hill, as she does to-day. His 
one scheme of life for Sep was that he should be sent 
to the ancient school where field-sports are cultivated 
to-day and English gentlemen turned upon the world 
more ignorant than any other gentlemen in the uni- 
verse. Then, of course, Sep must go to that college 
with which his father’s life had been so closely allied. 
And if it please God to call him to the Church, and 
the college should remember that it had given his 
father a living, and do the same by him — for that 
reason and no other — then, of course, Sep would be 
a made man. 

And the making of Sep had been in progress during 
the winter day that a fog-bank came in from the 
North Sea and clung tenaciously to the low, surfless 
coast. In the afternoon the sun broke through at 
last, wintry and pale. Sep, who, by some instinct — 
the instinct, it is to be supposed, of young animals — 
knew that he was destined to be of a generation that 
should cultivate ignorance out of doors, rather than 
learning by the fireside, threw aside his books and 
cried out that he could no longer breathe in his 
father’s study. 


280 


RETURNED EMPTY 


So Parson Marvin went off, alone, to visit a distant 
parishioner ; one who was dying by himself out on the 
marsh, in a cottage cut off from all the world in a 
spring tide. 

“Don’t forget that it is high tide at five o’clock, 
and that there is no moon, and that the dykes will be 
full. You will never find your way across the marsh 
after dark,” said Sep — the learned in tides and those 
practical affairs of nature, which were as a closed 
book to the scholar. 

Parson Marvin vaguely acknowledged the warning 
and went away, leaving Sep to accompany Miriam 
on her daily errand to the simple shops in Farling- 
ford, which would awake to life and business now 
that the sea-fog was gone. Eor the men of Farling- 
ford, like nearly all seafarers, are timorous of bad 
weather on shore and sit indoors during its passage, 
while they treat storm and rain with a calm contempt 
at sea. 

“Sail a-coming up the river, master,” River An- 
drew said to Sep, who was awaiting Miriam in the 
village street ; and he walked on, without further com- 
ment, spade on shoulder, toward the church-yard, 
where he spent a portion of his day, without apparent 
effect. 

So, when Miriam had done her shopping, it was 
only natural that they should turn their footsteps tow- 
ard the quay and the river-wall. Or was it fate? 

281 


THE LAST HOPE 

So often is the natural nothing but the inevitable in 
holiday garb. 

“That is no Farlingford boat,” said Sep, versed in 
river-side knowledge, so soon as he saw the balance- 
lug moving along the line of the river-wall, half a 
mile below the village. 

They stood watching. Few coasters were at sea in 
these months of wild weather, and there was nothing 
moving on the quay. The moss-grown slip-way, where 
“The Last Hope” had been drawn up for repair, 
stood gaunt and empty, half submerged by the flow- 
ing tide. Many Farlingford men were engaged in 
the winter fisheries on the Dogger, and farther 
north, in Lowestoft boats. In winter, Farlingford 
— thrust out into the North Sea, surrounded by 
marsh — is forgotten by the world. 

The solitary boat came round the corner into the 
wider sheet of water, locally known as Quay Reach. 

“A foreigner!” cried Sep, jumping, as was his 
wont, from one foot to the other with excitement. 
“It is like the boat that was brought up by the tide, 
with a dead man in it, long ago. And that was a 
Belgian boat.” 

Miriam was looking at the boat with a sudden 
brightness in her eyes, a rush of colour to her cheeks, 
which were round and healthy and of that soft clear 
pink which marks a face swept constantly by mist 
and a salty air. In flat countries, where men may 
282 


RETURNED EMPTY 


see each other, unimpeded by hedge or tree or hillock, 
across a space measured only by miles, the eye is 
soon trained — like the sailor’s eye — to see and recog- 
nise at a great distance. 

There was no mistaking the attitude of the solitary 
steersman of this foreign boat stealing quietly up to 
Farlingford on the flood tide. It was Loo Barebone ; 
sitting on the gunwale as he always sat, with one knee 
raised on the thwart, to support his elbow, and his 
chin in the palm of his hand, so that he could glance 
up the head of the sail or ahead, without needing to 
change his position. 

Sep turned and looked up at her. 

“I thought you said he was never coming back,” 
he said, reproachfully. 

“So I did. I thought he was never coming back.” 

Sep looked at her again, and then at the boat. One 
never knows how much children, and dogs — who live 
daily with human beings — understand. 

“Your face is very red,” he observed. “That comes 
from telling untruths.” 

“It comes from the cold wind,” replied Miriam, 
with an odd, breathless laugh. 

“If we do not go home, he will be there before us,” 
said Sep, gravely. “He will make one tack across to 
the other side, and then make the mouth of the creek.” 

They turned and walked, side by side, on the top 
of the sea-wall toward the rectory. Their figures 
283 


THE LAST HOPE 


must have been outlined against the sky, for any 
watching from the river. The girl, tall and strong, 
walking with the ease that comes from health and a 
steadfast mind; the eager, restless boy running and 
jumping by her side. Barebone must have seen them 
as soon as they saw him. They were part of F arling- 
ford, these two. He had a sudden feeling of having 
been away for years, with this difference: that he 
came back and found nothing changed. Whereas, in 
reality, he who returns after a long absence usually 
finds no one awaiting him. 

He did as Sep had foretold — crossing to the far 
side of the river, and then gaining the mouth of the 
creek in one tack. Miriam and Sep had reached the 
rectory garden first, and now stood waiting for him. 
He came on in silence. Last time — on “The Last 
Hope” — he had come up the river singing. 

Sep waved his hand, and, in response, Barebone 
nodded his head, with one eye peering ahead, for the 
breeze was fresh. 

The old chain was still there, imperfectly fastened 
round a tottering post at the foot of the tide-washed 
steps. It clinked as he made fast the boat. Miriam 
had not heard the sound of it since that night, long 
ago, when Loo had gone down the steps in the dark 
and cast off. 

“I was given a passage home in a French fishing- 
boat, and borrowed their dingey to come ashore in,” 
284 


RETURNED EMPTY 


said Loo, as he came up the steps. He knew that 
Farlingford would want some explanation, and that 
Sep would be proud to give it. An explanation is 
never the worse for a spice of truth. 

“Miriam told me you were never coming home 
again,” answered Sep, still nourishing that grievance. 

“Well, she was wrong, and here I am !” was Loo’s 
reply, with his old, ready laugh. “And here is Ear- 
lingford — unchanged, and no harm done.” 

“Why should there be any harm done ?” was Sep’s 
prompt question. 

Barebone was shaking hands with Miriam. 

“Oh, I don’t know,” he answered. “Because there 
always is harm done, I suppose.” 

Miriam was thinking that he had changed. That 
the man who had unmoored his boat at these steps 
six months ago had departed for ever, and that an- 
other had come back in his place. A minute later, 
as he turned to close the gate that shut off the rectory 
garden from the river-wall, chance ruled it that their 
eyes should meet for an instant, and she knew that he 
had not changed; that he might, perhaps, never 
change so long as he lived. She turned abruptly and 
led the way to the house. 

Sep had a hundred questions to ask, hut only a few 
of them were personal. Children live in a world of 
their own, and are not slow to invite those whom they 
like to come into it ; while to the others, they shut the 
285 


THE LAST HOPE 

door with a greater frankness than is permissible later 
in life. 

“Father,” he explained, “has gone to see old Doy, 
who is dying.” 

“Is he still dying ? He will never die, I am sure ; 
for he has been trying to do it ever since I remember,” 
laughed Barehone ; who was interested, it seemed, in 
Sep’s affairs, and never noticed that Miriam was 
walking more quickly than they were. 

“And I am rather anxious about him,” continued 
Sep, with the gravity that comes of a realised respon- 
sibility. “He moons along, you know, with his mind 
far away, and he doesn’t know the path across the 
marsh a bit. He is bound to lose his way, and it is 
getting dark. Suppose I shall have to go and look 
for him.” 

“With a lantern,” suggested Loo, darkly, without 
looking toward Miriam. 

“Oh, yes!” replied Sep, with delight. “With a 
lantern, of course. Nobody hut a fool would go out 
onto the marshes after dark without a lantern. The 
weed on the water makes it the same as the grass ; and 
that old woman who was nearly drowned last winter, 
you know, she walked straight in, and thought it was 
dry land.” 

And Loo heard no more, for they were at the door ; 
and Miriam, in the lighted hall, was waiting for them, 
with all the colour gone from her face. 

286 


RETURNED EMPTY 


“He is sure to be in in a few minutes,” she said ; 
for she had heard the end of their talk. She could 
scarcely have helped hearing Loo’s weighty suggestion 
of a lantern, which had had the effect he must have 
anticipated. Sep was already hurriedly searching for 
matches. It would be difficult to dissuade him from 
his purpose. What boy would willingly give up the 
prospect of an adventure on the marsh alone, with a 
bull’s-eye? Miriam tried, and tried in vain. She 
gained time, however, and was listening for Marvin’s 
footstep on the gravel all the while. 

Sep found the matches — and it chanced that there 
was a sufficiency of oil in his lantern. He lighted 
up and went away, leaving an abominable smell of 
untrimmed wick behind him. 

It was tea-time, and, half a century ago, that meal 
was a matter of greater importance than it is to-day. 
A fire burned in the dining-room, glowing warmly on 
the mellow walls and gleaming furniture ; but there 
was no lamp, nor need of one, in a room with large 
windows facing the sunset sky. 

Miriam led the way into this room, and lifted the 
shining, old-fashioned kettle to the hob. She took a 
chair that stood near, and sat, with her shoulder 
turned toward him, looking into the fire. 

“We will have tea as soon as they come in,” she 
said, in that voice of camaraderie which speaks of a 
life-long friendship between a man and a woman — if 

287 


THE LAST HOPE 

such a friendship be possible. Is it? — who knows? 
“They will not be long, I am sure. You will like tea, 
after having been so long abroad. It is one of the 
charms of coming home; or one of the alleviations. 
I don’t know which. And now, tell me all that has 
happened since you went away — if you care to.” 


288 


CHAPTER XXVII 


OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES 

Miriam’s manner toward him was the same as it 
had always been so long as he could remember. He 
had once thought — indeed, he had made to her the 
accusation — that she was always conscious of the so- 
cial gulf existing between them ; that she always re- 
membered that she was by birth and breeding a lady, 
whereas he was the son of an obscure Erenchman 
who was nothing but a clockmaker whose name could 
be read (and can to this day be deciphered) on a 
hundred timepieces in remote East Anglian farms. 

Since his change of fortune he had, as all men 
who rise to a great height or sink to the depths will 
tell, noted a corresponding change in his friends. 
Even Captain Clubbe had altered, and the affection 
which peeped out at times almost against his puri- 
tanical will seemed to have suffered a chill. The men 
of Farlingford, and even those who had sailed in “The 
Last Hope” with him, seemed to hold him at a dis- 
tance. They nodded to him with a brief, friendly 
smile, hut were shy of shaking hands. The hand 
289 


THE LAST HOPE 


which they would have held out readily enough, had 
he needed assistance in misfortune, slunk hastily into 
a pocket. For he who climbs will lose more friends 
than the ne’er-do-well. Some may account this to 
human nature for righteousness and others quite the 
contrary: for jealousy, like love, lies hidden in un- 
suspected corners. 

Juliette de Gemosac had been quite different to 
Loo since learning his story. Miriam alone remained 
unchanged. He had accused her of failing to rise 
superior to arbitrary social distinctions, and now, 
standing behind her in the fire-lit dining-room of the 
rectory, he retracted that accusation once and for all 
time in his own heart, though her justification came 
from a contrary direction to that from which it might 
have been expected. 

Miriam alone remained a friend — and nothing 
else, he added, bitterly, in his own heart. And she 
seemed to assume that their friendship, begun in face 
of social distinctions, should never have to suffer from 
that burthen. 

“I should like to hear,” she repeated, seeing that 
he was silent, “all that has happened since you went 
away; all that you may care to tell me.” 

“My heritage, you mean?” 

She moved in her seat but did not look round. She 
had laid aside her hat on coming into the house, and 
as she sat, leaning forward with her hands clasped 
290 


OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES 


together in her lap, gazing thoughtfully at the fire 
which glowed blue and white for the salt water that 
was in the drift-wood, her hair, loosened by the wind, 
half concealed her face. 

“Yes,” she answered, slowly. 

“Do you know what it is : — my heritage ?” lapsing, 
as he often did when hurried by some pressing 
thought, into a colloquialism half French. 

She shook her head, but made no audible reply. 

“Do you suspect what it is ?” he insisted. 

“I may have suspected, perhaps,” she admitted, 
after a pause. 

“When? How long?” 

She paused again. Quick and clever as he was, 
she was no less so. She weighed the question. Per- 
haps she found no answer to it, for she turned toward 
the door that stood open and looked out into the hall. 
The light of the lamp there fell for a moment across 
her face. 

“I think I hear them returning,” she said. 

“No,” he retorted, with an odd-sounding laugh, “for 
I should hear them before you did. I was brought 
up at sea. Do not answer the question, however, 
if you would rather not. You ask what has hap- 
pened since I went away. A great many things have 
happened which are of no importance. Such things 
always happen, do they riot? But one night, when 
we were quarrelling, Dormer Colville mentioned your 
291 


THE LAST HOPE 


name. He was very much alarmed and very angry, 
so he perhaps spoke the truth — by accident. He said 
that you had always known that I might be the King 
of France. Many things happened, as I tell you, 
which are of no importance, and which I have already 
forgotten, but that I remember and always shall.” 

“I have always known,” replied Miriam, with a 
short laugh, “that Mr. Dormer Colville is a liar. It 
is written on his face, for those who care to read.” 

A woman at bay is rarely merciful. 

“And I thought for an instant,” pursued Loo, “that 
such a knowledge might have been in your mind that 
night, the last I was here, last summer, on the river- 
wall. I had a vague idea that it might have influ- 
enced in some way the reply you gave me then.” 

Tie had come a step nearer and was standing over 
her. She could hear his hurried breathing. 

“Oh, no,” she replied, in a calm voice full of friend- 
liness. “You are quite wrong. The reason I gave 
you still holds good, and — and always will.” 

In the brief silence that followed this clear state- 
ment of affairs, they both heard the rattle of the iron 
gate by the sea-wall. Sep and his father were com- 
ing. Loo turned to look toward the hall and the front 
door, dimly visible in the shadow of the porch. While 
he did so Miriam passed her hand quickly across her 
face. When Loo turned again and glanced down at 
her her attitude was unchanged. 

292 


OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES 

“Will you look at me and say that again ?” he asked, 
slowly. 

“Certainly,” she replied. And she rose from her 
chair. She turned and faced him with the light of 
the hall-lamp full upon her. She was smiling and 
self-confident. 

“I thought,” he said, looking at her closely, “as I 
stood behind you, that there were tears in your eyes.” 

She went past him into the hall to meet Sep and 
his father, who were already on the threshold. 

“It must have been the firelight,” she said to Bare- 
bone as she passed him. 

A minute later Septimus Marvin was shaking him 
by the hand with a vague and uncertain but kindly 
grasp. 

“Sep came running to tell me that you were home 
again,” he said, struggling out of his overcoat. “Yes 
— yes. Home again to the old place. And little 
changed, I can see. Little changed, my boy. ‘Tem- 
pora mutantur/ eh ? and we ‘mutamur in illis.’ But 
you are the same.” 

“Of course. Why should I change? It is too 
late to change for the better now.” 

“Never! Never say that. But we do not want 
you to change. We looked for you to come in a 
coach-and-four — did we not, Miriam? For I sup- 
pose you have secured your heritage, since you are 
here again. It is a great thing to possess riches — 
293 


THE LAST HOPE 


and a great responsibility. Come, let us have tea 
and not think of such things. Yes — yes. Let us 
forget that such a thing as a heritage ever came be- 
tween us — eh, Miriam ?” 

And with a gesture of old-world politeness he stood 
aside for his niece to pass first into the dining-room, 
whither a servant had preceded them with a lamp. 

"It will not be hard to do that,” replied Miriam, 
steadily, “because he tells me that he has not yet 
secured it.” 

“All in good time — all in good time,” said Marvin, 
with that faith in some occult power, seemingly the 
Government and Providence working in conjunction, 
to which parsons and many women confide their 
worldly affairs and sit with folded hands. 

He asked many questions which were easy enough 
to answer; for he had no worldly wisdom himself, 
and did not look for it in other people. And then he 
related his own adventure — the great incident of his 
life — his visit to Paris. 

“A matter of business,” he explained. “Some du- 
plicates — one or two of my prints which I had de- 
cided to part with. Miriam also wished me to see 
into some small money matters of her own. Her 
guardian, John Turner, you may remember, resides 
in Paris. A schoolfellow of my own, by the way. 
But our ways diverged later in life. I found him 
unchanged — a kind heart — always a kind heart. He 
294 


OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES 


attempts to conceal it, as many do, under a flippant, 
almost a profane, manner of speech. ‘Brutum ful- 
men/ But I saw through it — I saw through it.” 

And the rector beamed on Loo through his spec- 
tacles with an innocent delight in a Christian charity 
which he mistook for cunning. 

“You see,” he went on, “we have spent a little 
money on the rectory. To-morrow you will see that 
we have made good the roof of the church. One could 
not ask the villagers to contribute, knowing that the 
children want hoots and scarcely know the taste of 
jam. Yes, John Turner was very kind to me. He 
found me a buyer for one of my prints.” 

The rector broke off with a sharp sigh and drank 
his tea. 

“We shall never miss it,” he added, with the hope- 
fulness of those who can blind themselves to facts. 
“Come, tell me your impressions of France.” 

“I have been there before,” replied Loo, with a 
curtness so unusual as to make Miriam glance at him. 
“I have been there before, you know. It would be 
more interesting to hear your own impressions, which 
must be fresher.” 

Miriam knew that he did not want to speak of 
France, and wondered why. But Marvin, eager to 
talk of his favourite study, seized the suggestion in 
all innocence. He had gone to Paris as he had wan- 
dered through life, with the mind of a child, eager, 
295 


THE LAST HOPE 


receptive, open to impression. Such minds pass by 
much that is of value, but to one or two conclusions 
they bring a perceptive comprehension which is pho- 
tographic in its accuracy. 

“I have followed her history with unflagging in- 
terest since boyhood,” he said, “but never until now 
have I understood France. I walked through the 
streets of Paris and I looked into the faces of the 
people, and I realised that the astonishing history 
of F ranee is true. One can see it in those faces. The 
city is brilliant, beautiful, unreal. The reality is in 
the faces of the people. Do you remember what 
Wellington said of them half a century ago ? ‘They 
are ripe/ he said, ‘for another Napoleon.’ But he 
could not see that Napoleon on the political horizon. 
And that is what I saw in their faces. They are 
ripe for something — they know not what.” 

“Did John Turner tell you that?” asked Loo, in 
an eager voice. “He who has lived in Paris all his 
life.” 

And Miriam caught the thrill of excitement in the 
voice that put this question. She glanced at Loo. 
His eyes were bright and his cheeks colourless. She 
knew that she was in the presence of some feeling 
that she did not understand. It was odd that an 
old scholar, knowing nothing but history could thus 
stir a listener whose touch had hitherto only skimmed 
the surface of life. 


296 


OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES 

“No,” answered Marvin, with assurance. “I saw 
it myself in their faces. Ah! if another such as 
Napoleon could only arise — such as he, but different. 
Not an adventurer, but a king and the descendant 
of kings — not allied, as Napoleon was, with a hun- 
dred other adventurers.” 

“Yes,” said Loo, in a muffled voice, looking away 
toward the fire. 

“A king whose wife should be a queen,” pursued 
the dreamer. 

“Yes,” said Loo again, encouragingly. 

“They could save France,” concluded Marvin, 
taking off his spectacles and polishing them with a 
silk handkerchief. Loo turned and looked at him, 
for the action so characteristic of a mere onlooker, 
indicated that the momentary concentration of a 
mind so stored with knowledge that confusion reigned 
there, was passing away. 

“From what?” asked Loo. “Save France from 
what?” 

“From inevitable disaster, my boy,” replied Mar- 
vin, gravely. “That is what I saw in those gay 
streets.” 

Loo glanced at him sharply. He had himself seen 
the same all through those provinces which must 
take their cue from Paris whether they will or no. 

“What a career !” murmured Marvin. “What a 
mission for a man to have in life — to save France! 
297 


THE LAST HOPE 

One does not like to think of the world without a 
France to lead it in nearly everything, or with a 
France, a mere ghost of her former self, exploited, 
depleted by another Bonaparte. And we must look 
in vain for that man as did the good Duke years 

ago” 

“I should like to have a shot at it,” put in Sep, 
who had just despatched a large piece of cake. 

“Heaven forbid !” exclaimed his father, only half 
in jest. 

“Better sit all day under the lee of a boat and make 
nets, like Sea Andrew,” advised Loo, with a laugh. 

“Do you think so ?” said Miriam, without looking 

up. 

“All the same, I’d like to have a shot at it,” per- 
sisted Sep. “Pass the cake, please.” 

Loo had risen and was looking at the clock. His 
face was drawn and tired and his eyes grave. 

“You will come in and see us as often as you can 
while you are here?” said the kindly rector, as if 
vaguely conscious of a change in this visitor. “You 
will always find a welcome whether you come in a 
coach-and-four or on foot — you know that.” 

“Thank you — yes. I know that.” 

The rector peered at him through his spectacles. 

“I hope,” he said, “that you will soon be successful 
in getting your own. You are worried about it, I 
fear. The responsibilities of wealth, perhaps. And 
298 


OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES 


yet many rich people are able to do good in the world, 
and must therefore be happy.” 

“I do not suppose I shall ever be rich,” said Loo, 
with a careless laugh. 

“No, perhaps not. But let us hope that all will 
be for the best. You must not attach too much im- 
portance to what I said about France, you know. I 
may be wrong. Let us hope I am. For I understand 
that your heritage is there.” 

“Yes,” answered Loo, who was shaking hands with 
Sep and Miriam, “my heritage is there.” 

“And you will go back to France ?” inquired Mar- 
vin, holding out his hand. 

“Yes,” was the reply, with a side glance in the 
direction of Miriam. “I shall go back to France.” 


299 


CHAPTER XXVIII 


barebone’s price 

At Farlingford, forgotten of the world, events 
move slowly and men’s minds assimilate change with- 
out shock. Old people look for death long before it 
arrives, so that when at last the great change comes 
it is effected quite calmly. There is no indecent haste, 
no scrambling to put a semblance of finish to the in- 
complete, as there is in the hurried death of cities. 
Young faces grow softly mellow without those lines 
and anxious crow’s-feet that mar the features of the 
middle-aged, who, to earn their daily bread or to kill 
the tedium of their lives, find it necessary to dwell 
in streets. 

“Loo’s home again,” men told each other at “The 
Black Sailor”; and the women, who discussed the 
matter in the village street, had little to add to this 
bare piece of news. There was nothing unusual 
about it. Indeed, it was customary for Farlingford 
men to come home again. They always returned, 
at last, from wide wanderings, which a limited con- 
versational capacity seemed to deprive of all inter- 
300 


BAREBONE’S PRICE 


est. Those that stayed at home learnt a few names, 
and that was all. 

“ Where are ye now from, Willum ?” the newly 
returned sailor would be kindly asked, with the side- 
ward jerk of the head. 

“A’m now from Valparaiso.” 

And that was all that there was to be said about 
Valparaiso and the experiences of this circumnavi- 
gator. Perhaps it was not considered good form to 
inquire further into that which was, after all, his own 
business. If you ask an East Anglian questions he 
will tell you nothing; if you do not inquire he will 
tell you less. 

Ro one, therefore, asked Barebone any questions. 
More especially is it considered, in seafaring commu- 
nities, impolite to make inquiry into your neighbour’s 
misfortune. If a man have the ill luck to lose his 
ship, he may well go through the rest of his life with- 
out hearing the mention of her name. It was under- 
stood in Farlingford that Loo Barebone had resigned 
his post on “The Last Hope” in order to claim a 
heritage in France. He had returned home, and 
was living quietly at Maidens Grave Farm with Mrs. 
Clubbe. It was, therefore, to be presumed that he 
had failed in his quest. This was hardly a matter 
for surprise to such as had inherited from their fore- 
fathers a profound distrust in Frenchmen. 

The brief February days followed each other with 
301 


THE LAST HOPE 


that monotony, marked by small events, that quickly 
lays the years aside. Loo lingered on, with a vague 
indecision in his mind which increased as the weeks 
passed by and the spell of the wide marsh-lands closed 
round his soul. He took up again those studies which 
the necessity of earning a living had interrupted 
years before, and Septimus Marvin, who had never 
left off seeking, opened new historical gardens to him 
and bade him come in and dig. 

Nearly every morning Loo went to the rectory to 
look up an obscure reference or elucidate an uncer- 
tain period. Nearly every evening, after the rectory 
dinner, he returned the books he had borrowed, and 
lingered until past Sep’s bedtime to discuss the day’s 
reading. Septimus Marvin, with an enthusiasm 
which is the reward of the simple-hearted, led the 
way down the paths of history while Loo and Miriam 
followed — the man with the quick perception of his 
race; the woman with that instinctive and untiring 
search for the human motive which can put heart 
into a printed page of history. 

Many a whole lifetime has slipped away in such 
occupations ; for history, already inexhaustible, grows 
in bulk day by day. Marvin was happier than he 
had ever been, for a great absorption is one of 
Heaven’s kindest gifts. 

For Barebone, France and his quest there, the Mar- 
quis de Gemosac, Dormer Colville, Juliette, lapsed 
302 


BAREBONE’S PRICE 


into a sort of dream, while Farlingford remained a 
quiet reality. Loo had not written to Dormer Col- 
ville. Captain Clubbe was trading between Alexan- 
dria and Bristol. “The Last Hope” was not to be 
expected in England before April. To communicate 
with Colville would be to turn that past dream, not 
wholly pleasant, into a grim reality. Loo therefore 
put off from day to day the evil moment. By nature 
and by training he was a man of action ; he tried to 
persuade himself that he was made for a scholar, and 
would be happy to pass the rest of his days in the 
study of that history which had occupied Septimus 
Marvin's thoughts during a whole lifetime. 

Perhaps he was right. He might have been happy 
enough to pass his days thus if life were unchanging ; 
if Septimus Marvin should never age and never die ; 
if Miriam should be always there, with her light touch 
on the deeper thoughts, her half-French way of un- 
derstanding the unspoken, with her steady friendship 
which might change, some day, into something else. 
This was, of course, inconsistent. Love itself is the 
most inconsistent of all human dreams ; for it would 
have some things change and others remain ever as 
they are. Whereas nothing stays unchanged for a 
single day : love, least of all. For it must go forward 
or back. 

“See !” cried Septimus Marvin, one evening, laying 
his hand on the open book before him. “See how 
303 


THE LAST HOPE 


strong are racial things. Here are the Bourbons for 
ever shutting their eyes to the obvious, for ever put- 
ting off the evil moment, for ever temporising — from 
father to son, father to son ; generation after genera- 
tion. Einally we come to Louis XVI. Bead his let- 
ters to the Comte d’ Artois. They are the letters of 
a man who knows the truth in his own heart and will 
not admit it even to himself.” 

“Yes,” admitted Loo. “Yes — you are right. It 
is racial, one must suppose.” 

And he glanced at Miriam, who did not meet his 
eyes but looked at the open page, with a smile on her 
lips half sad, wholly tolerant. 

Xext morning, Loo thought, he would write to Dor- 
mer Colville. But the following evening came, and 
he had not done so. He went, as usual, to the rectory, 
where the same kind welcome awaited him. Miriam 
knew that he had not written. Like him, she knew 
that an end of some sort must soon come. And the 
end came an hour later. 

Some day, Barebone knew, Dormer Colville would 
arrive. Every morning he half looked for him on 
the sea-wall, between “The Black Sailor” and the 
rectory garden. Any evening, he was well aware, 
the smiling face might greet him in the lamp-lit 
drawing-room. 

Sep had gone to bed earlier that night. The rector 
was reading aloud an endless collection of letters, from 
304 


BAREBONE’S PRICE 


which the careful student could scarcely fail to gather 
side- 1'ghts on history. Both Miriam and Loo heard 
the ang of the iron gate on the sea-wall. 

A minute or two later the old dog, who lived mys- 
teriously in the back premises, barked, and presently 
the servant announced that a gentleman was desirous 
of speaking to the rector. There were not many gen- 
tlemen within a day’s walk of the rectory. Someone 
must have put up at “The Black Sailor.” Theoret- 
ically, the rector was at the call of any of his parish- 
ioners at all moments; but in practice the people of 
Farlingford never sought his help. 

“A gentleman,” said Marvin, vaguely; “well, let 
him come in, Sarah.” 

Miriam and Barebone sat silently looking at the 
door. But the man who appeared there was not Dor- 
mer Colville. It was John Turner. 

He evinced no surprise on seeing Barebone, but 
shook hands with him with a little nod of the head, 
which somehow indicated that they had business to- 
gether. 

He accepted the chair brought forward by Septi- 
mus Marvin and warmed his hands at the fire ; in no 
hurry, it would appear, to state the reason for this 
unceremonious call. After all, Marvin was his old- 
est friend and Miriam his ward. Between old friends, 
explanations are often better omitted. 

“It is many years,” he said, at length, “since I 

305 


THE LAST HOPE 


heard their talk. They speak with their tongues and 
their teeth, but not their lips.” 

“And their throats,” put in Marvin, eagerly. “That 
is because they are of Teuton descent. So different 
from the French, eh, Turner?” 

Turner nodded a placid acquiescence. Then he 
turned, as far, it would appear, as the thickness of 
his neck allowed, toward Barebone. 

“Saw in a French paper,” he said, “that the ‘Petite 
Jeanne’ had put in to Lowestoft, to replace a dingey 
lost at sea. So I put two and two together. It is 
my business putting two and two together, and mak- 
ing five of them when I can, but they generally make 
four. I thought I should find you here.” 

Loo made no answer. He had only seen John 
Turner once in his life — for a short hour, in a room 
full of people, at Koyan. The banker stared straight 
in front of him for a few moments. Then he raised 
his sleepy little eyes directly to Miriam’s face. He 
heaved a sigh, and fell to studying the burning logs 
again. And the colour slowly rose to Miriam’s cheeks. 
The hanker, it seemed, was about his business again, 
in one of those simple addition sums, which he some- 
times solved correctly. 

“To you,” he said, after a moment’s pause, with a 
glance in Loo’s direction, “to you, it must appear 
that I am interfering in what is not my own business. 
You are wrong there.” 


306 


BAREBONE’S PRICE 


, He had clasped his hands across his abnormal 
waisU oat, and he half closed his eyes as he blinked 
at the y re. 

“I ani a sort of intermediary angel,” he went on, 
“between private persons in France and their friends 
in England. Nothing to do with state affairs, you 
understand; at least, very little. Many persons in 
England have relations or property in France. French 
persons fall in love with people on this side of the 
Channel, and vice-versa. And, sooner or later, all 
these persons, who are in trouble with their property 
or their affections, come to me, because money is in- 
variably at the bottom of the trouble. Money is in- 
variably at the bottom of all trouble. And I represent 
money.” 

He pursed up his lips and gazed somnolently at the 
fire. 

“Ask anybody,” he went on, dreamily, after a 
pause, “if that is not the bare truth. Ask Colville, 
ask Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, ask Miriam Liston, 
sitting here beside us, if I exaggerate the importance 
of — of myself.” 

“Everyone,” admitted Barebone, cheerfully, 
“knows that you occupy a great position in Paris.” 

Turner glanced at him and gave a thick chuckle 
in his throat. 

“Thank you,” he said. “Very decent of you. And 
that point being established, I will explain further, 

307 


THE LAST HOPE 


that I am not here of my own free will. I a n only 
an agent. No man in his senses would comedo Far- 
lingford in mid-winter unless — ” he broke , with 
a sharp sigh, and glanced down at Miriam’, .dipper 
resting on the fender, “unless he was much younger 
than I am. I came because I was paid to do it. Came 
to make you a proposition.” 

“To make me a proposition ?” inquired Loo, as the 
identity of Turner’s hearers had become involved. 

“Yes. And I should recommend you to give it your 
gravest consideration. It is one of the most foolish 
propositions, from the proposer’s point of view, that 
I have ever had to make. I should blush to make it, 
if it were any use blushing, but no one sees blushes 
on my cheeks now. Do not decide in a hurry — 
sleep on it. I always sleep on a question.” 

He closed his eyes, and seemed about to compose 
himself to slumber then and there. 

“I am no longer young,” he admitted, after a pause, 
“and therefore propose to take one of the few allevia- 
tions allowed to advancing years and an increasing 
avoirdupois. I am going to give you some advice. 
There is only one thing worth having in this life, and 
that is happiness. Even the possibility of it is worth 
all other possibilities put together. If a man have a 
chance of grasping happiness — I mean a home and 
the wife he wants, and all that — he is wise to throw 
all other chances to the wind. Such, for instance, as 
308 


BAREBOXE’S PRICE 


the chance of greatness, of fame or wealth, of grati- 
fied vanity or satisfied ambition.” 

He had spoken slowly, and at last he ceased speak- 
ing, as if overcome by a growing drowsiness. A queer 
silence followed this singular man’s words. Bare- 
bone had not resumed his seat. He was standing by 
the mantelpiece, as he often did, being quick and 
eager when interested, and not content to sit still and 
express himself calmly in words, but must needs em- 
phasise his meaning by gestures and a hundred quick 
movements of the head. 

“Go on,” he said. “Let us have the proposition.” 

“And no more advice ?” 

Loo glanced at Miriam. He could see all three 
faces where he stood, but only by the light of the fire. 
Miriam was nearest to the hearth. He could see that 
her eyes were aglow — possibly with anger. 

Barebone shrugged his shoulders. 

“You are not an agent — you are an advocate,” he 
said. 

Turner raised his eyes with the patience of a slum- 
bering animal that has been prodded. 

“Yes,” he said — “your advocate. There is one 
more chance I should advise any man to shun — to 
cast to the four winds, and hold on only to that tangi- 
ble possibility of happiness in the present : it is the 
chance of enjoying, in some dim and distant future, 
the satisfaction of having, in a half-forgotten past, 
309 


THE LAST HOPE 


done one’s duty. One’s first duty is to secure, by all 
legitimate means, one’s own happiness.” 

“What is the proposition ?” interrupted Barebone, 
quickly; and Turner, beneath his heavy lids, had 
caught in the passing the glance from Miriam's eyes, 
for which possibly both he and Loo Barebone had 
been waiting. 

“One hundred thousand pounds,” replied the 
banker, bluntly, “in first-class English securities, in 
return for a written undertaking on your part to re- 
linquish all claim to any heritage you may think your- 
self entitled to in France. You will need to give your 
word of honour never to set foot on French soil — and 
that is all.” 

“I never, until this moment,” replied Barebone, 
“knew the value of my own pretensions.” 

“Yes,” said Turner, quietly; “that is the obvious 
retort. And having made it, you can now give a few 
minutes’ calm reflection to my proposition — say five 
minutes, until that clock strikes half-past nine — and 
then I am ready to answer any questions you may 
wish to ask.” 

Barebone laughed good-humouredly, and so far fell 
in with the suggestion that he leant his elbow on the 
corner of the mantelpiece and looked at the clock. 


310 


CHAPTER XXIX 


IN THE DARK 

Had John Turner been able to see round the 
curve of his own vast cheeks he might have per- 
ceived the answer to his proposition lurking in a lit- 
tle contemptuous smile at the corner of Miriam’s 
closed lips. Loo saw it there, and turned again to 
the contemplation of the clock on the mantelpiece 
which had already given a preliminary click. 

Thus they waited until the minutes should elapse, 
and John Turner, with a smile of simple pleasure at 
their ready acquiescence in his suggestion, probably 
reflected behind his vacuous face that silence rarely 
implies indecision. 

When at last the clock struck, Loo turned to him 
with a laugh and a shake of the head as if the refusal 
were so self-evident that to put it into words were a 
work of supererogation. 

“Who makes the offer?” he asked. 

Turner smiled on him with visible approbation as 
upon a quick and worthy foe who fought a capable 
fight with weapons above the board. 

“No matter — since you are disposed to refuse. 
311 


THE LAST HOPE 


The money is in my hands as is the offer. Both are 
good. Both will hold good till to-morrow morning.” 

Septimus Marvin gave a little exclamation of ap- 
proval. He had been sitting by the table looking 
from one to the other over his spectacles with the 
eager smile of the listener who understands very 
little, and while wishing that he understood more is 
eager to put in a word of approval or disapprobation 
on safe and general lines. It was quite obvious to 
J ohn Turner, who had entered the room in ignorance 
on this point, that Septimus Marvin knew nothing of 
Loo Barebone’s heritage in France while Miriam 
knew all. 

“There is one point,” he said, “which is perhaps 
scarcely worth mentioning. The man who makes 
the offer is not only the most unscrupulous, but is 
likely to become one of the most powerful men in 
Eur — men I know. There is a reverse side to 
the medal. There always is a reverse side to the 
good things of this world. Should you refuse his 
ridiculously generous offer you will make an enemy 
for life — one who is nearing that point where men 
stop at nothing.” 

Turner glanced at Miriam again. Her clean-cut 
features had a stony stillness and her eyes looked 
obstinately at the clock. The banker moved in his 
chair as if suddenly conscious that it was time to go. 

“Do not,” he said to Barebone, “be misled or mis- 
312 


IN THE DAKK 


lead yourself into a false estimate of the strength of 
your own case. The offer I make you does not in 
any way indicate that you are in a strong position. 
It merely shows the indolence of a man naturally 
open-handed, who would always rather pay than 
fight.” 

“Especially if the money is not his own.” 

“Yes,” admitted Turner, stolidly, “that is so. 
Especially if the money is not his own. I daresay 
you know the weakness of your own case: others 
know it too. A portrait is not much to go on. Por- 
traits are so easily copied; so easily changed.” 

He rose as he spoke and shook hands with Mar- 
vin. Then he turned to Miriam, but he did not meet 
her glance. Last of all he shook hands with Bare- 
bone. 

“Sleep on it,” he said. “Nothing like sleeping on 
a question. I am staying at The Black Sailor/ See 
you to-morrow.” 

He had come, had transacted his business and 
gone, all in less than an hour, with an extraordinary 
leisureliness almost amounting to indolence. He 
had lounged into the house, and now he departed 
without haste or explanation. Never hurry, never 
explain, was the text upon which John Turner 
seemed to base the sleepy discourse of his life. For 
each of us is a living sermon to his fellows, and, it 
is to be feared, the majority are warnings. 

313 


THE LAST HOPE 


Turner had dragged on his thick overcoat, not 
without Loo’s assistance, and, with the collar turned 
up about his ears, he went out into the night, leaving 
the three persons whom he had found in the draw- 
ing-room standing in the hall looking at the door 
which he closed decisively behind him. “Seize your 
happiness while you can/’ he had urged. “If not — ” 
and the decisive closing of a door on his departing 
heel said the rest. 

The clocks struck ten. It was not worth while 
going back to the drawing-room. All Farlingford 
was abed in those days by nine o’clock. Barebone 
took his coat and prepared to follow Turner. Miriam 
was already lighting her bedroom candle. She bade 
the two men good-night and went slowly upstairs. 
As she reached her own room she heard the front 
door closed behind Loo and the rattle of the chain 
under the uncertain fingers of Septimus Marvin. 
The sound of it was like the clink of that other chain 
by which Barebone had made fast his boat to the 
tottering post on the river-wall. 

Miriam’s room was at the front of the house, and 
its square Georgian windows faced eastward across 
the river to the narrow spit of marsh-land and the 
open sea beyond it. A crescent of moon far gone 
on the wane, yellow and forlorn, was rising from 
the sea. An uncertain path of light lay across the 
face of the far-off tide-way — broken by a narrow 
314 


IN THE DARK 


strip of darkness and renewed again close at hand 
across the wide river almost to the sea-wall beneath 
the window. From this window no house could be 
seen by day; nothing but a vast expanse of water 
and land hardly less level and unbroken. No light 
was visible on sea or land now : nothing but the wan- 
ing moon in a cold clear sky. 

Miriam threw herself, all dressed, on her bed with 
the abandonment of one who is worn out by some 
great effort, and buried her face in the pillow. 

Barebone’s way lay to the left along the river- 
wall by the side of the creek. Turner had gone to 
the right, taking the path that led down the river to 
the old quay and the village. Whereas Barebone 
must turn his back on Farlingford to reach the farm 
which still crouches behind a shelter of twisted oaks 
and still bears the name of Maidens Grave; though 
the name is now nothing but a word. For no one 
knows who the maiden was, or where her grave, or 
what brought her to it. 

The crescent moon gave little light, but Loo knew 
his way beneath the stunted cedars and through the 
barricade of ilex drawn round the rectory on the 
northern side. His eyes, trained to darkness, saw 
the shadowy form of a man awaiting him beneath 
the cedars almost as soon as the door was closed. 

He went toward him, perceiving with a sudden 
misgiving that it was not J ohn Turner. A momen- 
315 


THE LAST HOPE 


tary silhouette against the northern sky showed that 
it was Colville, come at last. 

“Quick — this way!” he whispered, and taking 
Barebone’s arm he led him through the bushes. He 
halted in a little open space between the ilex and 
the river-wall, which is fifteen feet high at the meet- 
ing of the creek and the larger stream. “There are 
three men, who are not Farlingford men, on the 
outer side of the sea-wall below the rectory landing. 
Turner must have placed them there. I’ll be even 
with him yet. There is a large fishing-smack lying 
at anchor inside the Hess — just across the marsh. 
It is the ‘Petite Jeanne.’ I found this out while you 
were in there. I could hear your voices.” 

“Could you hear what he said?” 

“Ho,” answered Colville, with a sudden return to 
his old manner, easy and sympathetic. “Ho — this 
is no time for joking, I can tell you that. You have 
had a narrow escape, I assure you, Barebone. That 
man, the Captain of the ‘Petite Jeanne/ is well known. 
There are plenty of people in France who want to 
get quietly rid of some family encumbrance — a man 
in the way, you understand, a son too many, a hus- 
band too much, a stepson who will inherit — the 
world is full of superfluities. Well, the Captain 
of the ‘Petite Jeanne’ will take them a voyage for 
their health to the Iceland fisheries. They are so 
far and so remote — the Iceland fisheries. The 
316 


IN THE DARK 


climate is bad and accidents happen. And if the 
Tetite Jeanne* returns short-handed, as she often 
does, the other boats do the same. It is only a ques- 
tion of a few entries in the custom-house books at 
Fecamp. Do you see?” 

“Yes,” admitted Barebone, thoughtfully. “I 
see.” 

“I suppose it suggested itself to you when you 
were on board, and that is why you took the first 
chance of escape.” 

“Well, hardly; but I escaped, so it does not 
matter.” 

“Ro,” acquiesced Colville. “It doesn’t matter. 
But how are we to get out of this ? They are waiting 
for us under the sea-wall. Is there a way across the 
marsh?” 

“Yes — I know a way. But where do you want to 
go to-night?” 

“Out of this,” whispered Colville, eagerly. “Out 
of Farlingford and Suffolk before the morning if we 
can. I tell you there is a French gunboat at Har- 
wich, and another in the North Sea. It may be 
chance and it may not. But I suspect there is a war- 
rant out against you. And, failing that, there is the 
Tetite Jeanne* hanging about waiting to kidnap you 
a second time. And Turner’s at the bottom of it, 
damn him!” 

Again Dormer Colville allowed a glimpse to ap- 

317 


THE LAST HOPE 


pear of another man quite different from the easy, 
indolent man-of-the-world, the well-dressed ad- 
venturer of a day when adventure was mostly sought 
in drawing-rooms, when scented and curled dandies 
were made or marred by women. For a moment 
Colville was roused to anger and seemed capable of 
manly action. But in an instant the humour passed 
and he shrugged his shoulders and gave a short, in- 
different laugh beneath his breath. 

“Come,” he said, “lead the way and I will follow. 
I have been out here since eight o’clock and it is 
deucedly cold. I followed Turner from Paris, for 
I knew he was on your scent. Once across the marsh 
we can talk without fear as we go along.” 

Barebone obeyed mechanically, leading the way 
through the bushes to the kitchen-garden and over 
an iron fencing on to the open marsh. This 
stretched inland for two miles without a hedge or 
other fence but the sunken dykes which intersected it 
across and across. Any knowing his way could save 
two miles on the longer way by the only road con- 
necting Earlingford with the mainland and tapping 
the great road that runs north and south a few miles 
inland. 

There was no path, for few ever passed this way. 
By day a solitary shepherd watched his flocks here. 
By night the marsh was deserted. Across some of 
the dykes a plank is thrown, the whereabouts of 
318 


IN THE DARK 

which is indicated by a post, waist-high, driven into 
the ground, easily enough seen by day but hard to 
find after dark. Not all the dykes have a plank, 
and for the most part the marsh is divided into 
squares, each only connected at one point with its 
neighbour. 

Barebone knew the way as well as any in Farling- 
ford, and he struck out across the thick grass which 
crunched briskly under the foot, for it was coated 
with rime, and the icy wind blew in from the sea a 
freezing mist. Once or twice Barebone, having 
made a bee-line across from dyke to dyke, failed to 
strike the exact spot where the low post indicated a 
plank, and had to pause and stoop down so as to find 
its silhouette against the sky. When they reached 
a plank he tried its strength with one foot and then 
led the way across it, turning and waiting at the far 
end for Colville to follow. It was unnecessary to 
warn him against a slip, for the plank was no more 
than nine inches wide and shone white with rime. 
Each foot must be secure before its fellow was 
lifted. 

Colville, always ready to fall in with a com- 
panion^ humour, ever quick to understand the 
thoughts of others, respected his silence. Perhaps 
he was not far from guessing the cause of it. 

Loo was surprised to find that Dormer Colville 
was less antipathetic than he had anticipated. For 
319 


THE LAST HOPE 


the last month, night and day, he had dreaded Col- 
ville^ arrival, and now that he was here he was al- 
most glad to see him; almost glad to quit Farling- 
ford. And his heart was hot with anger against 
Miriam. 

Turner’s offer had at all events been worth con- 
sidering. Had he been alone when it was made he 
would certainly have considered it; he would have 
turned it this way and that. He would have liked 
to play with it as a cat plays with a mouse, knowing 
all the while that he must refuse in the end. Per- 
haps Turner had made the offer in Miriam’s pres- 
ence, expecting to find in her a powerful ally. It 
was only natural for him to think this. Ever since 
the beginning, men have assigned to women the role 
of the dissuader, the drag, the hinderer. It is al- 
ways the woman, tradition tells us, who persuades 
the man to be a coward, to stay at home, to shirk a 
difficult or a dangerous duty. 

As a matter of fact Turner had made this mistake. 
He had always wondered why Miriam Liston elected 
to live at Farlingford when with her wealth and 
connections, both in England and France, she might 
live a gayer life elsewhere. There must, he re- 
flected, be some reason for it. 

When whosoever does anything slightly uncon- 
ventional or leaves undone what custom and gossip 
make almost obligatory, a relation or a mere inter- 
320 


IN THE DARK 


fering neighbour is always at hand to wag her head 
and say there must be some reason for it. Which 
means, of course, one specific reason. And the 
worst of it is that she is nearly always right. 

John Turner, laboriously putting two small 
numerals together, after his manner, had concluded 
that Loo Barebone was the reason. Even banking 
may, it seems, be carried on without the loss of all 
human weakness, especially if the banker be of mid- 
dle age, unmarried, and deprived by an unromantic 
superfluity of adipose tissue of the possibility of liv- 
ing through a romance of his own. Turner had con- 
sented to countenance, if not actually to take part in, 
a nefarious scheme, to rid France and the present 
government of one who might easily bring about its 
downfall, on certain conditions. Knowing quite well 
that Loo Barebone could take care of himself at sea, 
and was quite capable of effecting an escape if he 
desired it, he had put no obstacle in the way of the 
usual voyage to the Iceland fisheries. Since those 
days many governments in France have invented 
many new methods of disposing of a political foe. 
Dormer Colville was only anticipating events when 
he took away the character of the Captain of the 
“Petite Jeanne.” 

Turner had himself proposed this alternative 
method of securing Barebone’s silence. He had 
even named the sum. He had seized the excellent 
321 


THE LAST HOPE 


opportunity of laying it before Barebone in the quiet 
intimacy of the rectory drawing-room with Miriam 
in the soft lamp-light beside him, with the scent of 
the violets at her breast mingling with the warm 
smell of the wood fire. 

And Barebone had laughed at the offer. 


322 


CHAPTER XXX 


IN THE FURROW AGAIN 

Turner, stumbling along the road to “The Black 
Sailor,” probably wondered why he had failed. It 
is to be presumed that he knew that the ally he had 
looked to for powerful aid had played him false at 
the crucial moment. 

His misfortune is common to all men who presume 
to take anything for granted from a woman. 

Barebone, stumbling along in the dark in another 
direction, was as angry with Miriam as she in her 
turn was angry with Turner. She was, Barebone 
reflected, so uncompromising. She saw her course 
so clearly, so unmistakably — as birds that fly in the 
night — and from that course nothing, it seemed, 
would move her. It was a question of temperament 
and not of principle. For, even half a century ago, 
high principles were beginning to go out of fashion 
in the upper strata of a society which in these days 
tolerates anything except cheating at games. 

Barebone himself was of a different temperament. 
He liked to blind himself to the inevitable end, to 
323 


THE LAST HOPE 


temporise with the truth, whereas Miriam, with a sort 
of dogged courage essentially English, perceived the 
hard truth at once and clung to it, though it hurt. 
And all the while Barebone knew at the back of his 
heart that his life was not his own to shape. At the 
end, says an Italian motto, stands Destiny. Bare- 
bone wanted to make believe ; he wanted to pretend 
that his path lay down a flowery way, knowing all 
the while that he had a hill' to climb and Destiny 
stood at the top. 

Colville had come at the right time. It is the fate 
of some men to come at the right moment, just as it 
is the lot of others never to be there when they are 
wanted and their place is filled by a bystander and 
an opportunity is gone for ever. Which is always a 
serious matter, for God only gives one or two oppor- 
tunities to each of us. 

Colville had come with his ready sympathy, not 
expressed as the world expresses its sympathy, in 
words, but by a hundred little self-abnegations. He 
was always ready to act up to the principles of his 
companion for the moment or to act up to no prin- 
ciples at all should that companion be deficient. 
Moreover, he never took it upon himself to judge 
others, but extended to his neighbour a large toler- 
ance, in return for which he seemed to ask nothing. 

“I have a carriage,” he said, when on a broader 
cart-track they could walk side by side, “waiting for 
324 


IN THE FURROW AGAIN 


me at the roadside inn at the junction of the two 
roads. The man brought me from Ipswich to the 
outskirts of Farlingford, and I sent him back to the 
high road to wait for me there, to put up and stay 
all night, if necessary.” 

Barebone was beginning to feel tired. The wind 
was abominably cold. He heard with satisfaction 
that Colville had as usual foreseen his wishes. 

“I dogged Turner all the way from Paris, hardly 
letting him out of my sight,” Colville explained, cheer- 
ily, when they at length reached the road. “It is easy 
enough to keep in touch with one so remarkably stout, 
for everyone remembers him. What did he come to 
Farlingford for?” 

“Apparently to try and buy me off.” 

“For Louis Bonaparte ?” 

“He did not say so.” 

“No,” said Colville. “He would not say so. But 
it is pretty generally suspected that he is in that gal- 
ley, and pulls an important oar in it, too. What did 
he offer you ?” 

“A hundred thousand pounds.” 

“Whew!” whistled Colville. He stopped short in 
the middle of the road. “Whew!” he repeated, 
thoughtfully, “a hundred thousand pounds ! Gad ! 
They must be afraid of you. They must think that 
we are in a strong position. And what did you say, 
Barebone ?” 


325 


THE LAST HOPE 


“I refused.” 

“Why?” 

Barebone paused, and after a moment’s thought 
made no answer at all. He could not explain to Dor- 
mer Colville his reason for refusing. 

“Outright ?” inquired Colville, deep in thought. 

“Yes.” 

Colville turned and glanced at him sideways, 
though it was too dark to see his face. 

“I should have thought,” he said, tentatively, after 
a while, “that it would have been wise to accept. A 
bird in the hand, you know — a damned big bird ! And 
then afterwards you could see what turned up.” 

“You mean I could break my word later on,” in- 
quired Barebone, with that odd downrightness which 
at times surprised Colville and made him think of 
Captain Clubbe. 

“Well, you know,” he explained, with a tolerant 
laugh, “in politics it often turns out that a man’s duty 
is to break his word — duty toward his party, and his 
country, and that sort of thing.” 

Which was plausible enough, as many eminent 
politicians seem to have found in these later times. 

“I dare say it may be so,” answered Barebone, 
“but I refused outright, and there is an end to it.” 

For now that he was brought face to face with the 
situation, shorn of side issues and set squarely before 
him, he envisaged it clearly enough. He did not want 
326 


IN THE FURROW AGAIN 


a hundred thousand pounds. He had only wanted 
the money for a moment because the thought leapt 
into his mind that a hundred thousand pounds meant 
Miriam. Then he saw that little contemptuous smile 
tilting the corner of her lips, and he had no use for 
a million. 

If he could not have Miriam, he would be King 
of France. It is thus that history is made, for those 
who make it are only men. And Clio, that greatest 
of the daughters of Zeus, about whose feet cluster 
all the famous names of the makers of this world’s 
story, has, after all, only had the reversion of the 
earth’s great men. She has taken them after some 
forgotten woman of their own choosing has had the 
first refusal. 

Thus it came about that the friendship so nearly 
severed one evening at the Hotel Gemosac, in Paris, 
was renewed after a few months; and Barebone felt 
assured once more that no one was so well disposed 
toward him as Dormer Colville. 

There was no formal reconciliation, and neither 
deemed it necessary to refer to the past. Colville, it 
will be remembered, was an adept at that graceful 
tactfulness which is somewhat clumsily described by 
this tolerant generation as going on as if nothing had 
happened. 

By the time that the waning moon was high enough 
in the eastern sky to shed an appreciable light upon 
327 


THE LAST HOPE 


their path, they reached the junction of the two roads 
and set off at a brisk pace southward toward Ipswich. 
So far as the eye could reach, the wide heath was 
deserted, and they talked at their ease. 

“There is nothing for it hut to wake up my driver 
and make him take us back to Ipswich to-night. To- 
morrow morning we can take train to London and be 
there almost as soon as John Turner realises that you 
have given him the slip/’ said Colville, cheerily. 

“And then?” 

“And then back to France — where the sun shines, 
my friend, and the spring is already in the air. Think 
of that! It is so, at least, at Gemosac, for I heard 
from the Marquis before I quitted Paris. Your dis- 
appearance has nearly broken a heart or two down 
there, I can tell you. The old Marquis was in a great 
state of anxiety. I have never seen him so upset 
about anything, and Juliette did not seem to be able 
to offer him any consolation.” 

“Back to France?” echoed Barebone, not without 
a tone of relief, almost of exultation, in his voice. 
“Will it be possible to go back there, since we have 
to run away from Farlingford ?” 

“Safer there than here,” replied Colville. “It may 
sound odd, but it is true. De Gemosac is one of the 
most powerful men in France — not intellectually, 
perhaps, but by reason of his great name — and they 
would not dare to touch a protege or a guest of his. 
328 


IN THE FURROW AGAIN 


If you go back there now you must stay at Gemosac ; 
they have put the chateau into a more habitable con- 
dition, and are ready to receive you.” 

He turned and glanced at Loo’s face in the moon- 
light. 

“There will be a difference, you understand. You 
will be a different person from what you were when 
last there,” he went on, in a muffled voice. 

“Yes, I understand,” replied Barebone, gravely. 
Already the dream was taking shape — Colville’s per- 
suasive voice had awakened him to find that it was 
no dream, but a reality — and Farlingford was itself 
fading back into the land of shadows. It was only 
France, after all, that was real. 

“That journey of ours,” explained Colville, vague- 
ly, “has made an extraordinary difference. The whole 
party is aroused and in deadly earnest now.” 

Barebone made no answer, and they walked on in 
meditative silence toward the roadside inn, which 
stood up against the southern sky a few hundred 
yards ahead. 

“In fact,” Colville added, after a silence, “the ball 
is at your feet, Barebone. There can be no looking 
back now.” 

And again Barebone made no answer. It was a 
tacit understanding, then. 

For greater secrecy, Barebone walked on toward 
Ipswich alone, while Colville went into the inn to 
329 


THE LAST HOPE 


arouse his driver, whom he found slumbering in the 
wide chimney corner before a log fire. From Ipswich 
to London, and thus on to Newhaven, they journeyed 
pleasantly enough in company, for they were old 
companions of the road, and Colville’s unruffled good 
humour made him an easy comrade for travel even in 
days when the idea of comfort reconciled with speed 
had not suggested itself to the mind of man. 

Such, indeed, was his foresight that he had brought 
with him to London, and there left awaiting further 
need of it, that personal baggage which Loo had per- 
force left behind him at the Hotel Gemosac in Paris. 

They made but a brief halt in London, where Col- 
ville admitted gaily that he had no desire to be seen. 

“I might meet my tailor in Piccadilly,” he said. 
“And there are others who may perhaps consider 
themselves aggrieved.” 

At Colville’s club, where they dined, he met more 
than one friend. 

“Hallo !” said one who had the ruddy countenance 
and bluff manners of a retired major. “Hallo! 
Who’d have expected to see you here ? I didn’t know 
— I — thought — eh ! dammy !” 

And a hundred facetious questions gleamed from 
the major’s eye. 

“All right, my boy,” answered Colville, cheerfully. 
“I am off to France to-morrow morning.” 

The Major shook his head wisely as if in approval 
330 


IN THE FURROW AGAIN 


of a course of conduct savouring of that prudence 
which is the better part of valour, glanced at Loo 
Barebone, and waited in vain for an invitation to take 
a vacant chair near at hand. 

“Still in the south of France, I suppose ?” 

“Still in the south of France/’ replied Colville, 
turning to Barebone in a final way, which had the 
effect of dismissing this inquisitive idler. 

While they were at dinner another came. He was 
a raw-boned Scotchman, who spoke in broken English 
when the waiter was absent and in perfect French 
wdien that servitor hovered near. 

“I wish I could show my face in Paris,” he said, 
frankly, “but I can’t. Too much mixed up with 
Louis Philippe to find favour in the eyes of the Prince 
President.” 

“Why ?” asked Colville. “What could you gain by 
showing in Paris a face which I am sure has the 
stamp of innocence all over it?” 

The Scotchman laughed curtly. 

“Gain?” he answered. “Gain? I don’t say I 
would, but I think I might be able to turn an honest 
penny out of the approaching events.” 

“What events?” 

“The Lord alone knows,” replied the Scotchman, 
who had never set foot in his country, but had ac- 
quired elsewhere the prudent habit of never answer- 
ing a question. “France doesn’t, I am sure of that. 

331 


THE LAST HOPE 


I am thinking there will be events, though, before 
long, Colville. Will there not, now ?” 

Colville looked at him with an open smile. 

“You mean,” he said, slowly, “the Prince Presi- 
dent.” 

“That is what he calls himself at present. Pm 
wondering how long. Eh ! man. He is just pouring 
money into the country from here, from America, 
from Austria — from wherever he can get it.” 

“Why is he doing that ?” 

“Eh ? You must ask somebody who knows him 
better than I do. They say you knew him yourself 
once well enough, eh ?” 

“He is not a man I have much faith in,” said Col- 
ville, vaguely. “And France has no faith in him at 
all.” 

“So Pm told. But France — well, does France 
know what she wants ? She mostly wants something 
without knowing what it is. She is like a woman. 
It’s excitement she wants, perhaps. And she will 
buy it at any cost, and then find afterward she has 
paid too dear for it. That is like a woman, too. But 
it isn’t another Bonaparte she wants, I am sure of 
that.” 

“So am I,” answered Colville, with a side glance 
toward Barebone, a mere flicker of the eyelids. 

“Hot unless it is a Hapoleon of that ilk.” 

“And he is not,” completed Colville. 

332 


IN THE FURROW AGAIN 


“But — ” the Scotchman paused, for a waiter came 
at this moment to tell him that his dinner was ready 
at a table nearer to the fire. “But,” he went on, in 
French, for the waiter lingered, “but he might be 
able to persuade France that it is himself she wants — 
might he not, now ? With money at the back of it, 
eh?” 

“He might,” admitted Colville, doubtfully. 

The Scotchman moved away, but came back again. 

“I am thinking,” he said, with a grim smile, “that 
like all intelligent people who know France, you are 
aware that it is a king she wants.” 

“But not an Orleans king,” replied Colville, with 
his friendly and indifferent laugh. 

The Scotchman smiled more grimly still and went 
away. 

He was seated too near for Colville and Loo to talk 
of him. But Colville took an opportunity to mention 
his name in an undertone. It was a name known all 
over Europe then, but forgotten now. 


333 


CHAPTER XXXI 


THE THURSDAY OF MADAME DE CHANTONNAY 

“It is/* Madame de Chantonnay had maintained 
throughout the months of January and February — 
“it is an affair of the heart.” 

She continued to hold this opinion with, however, 
a shade less conviction, well into a cold March. 

“It is an affair of the heart, Abbe,” she said. 
“Allez, I know what I talk of. It is an affair of the 
heart and nothing more. There is someone in Eng- 
land: some blonde English girl. They are always 
washing, I am told. And certainly they have that 
air — like a garment that has been too often to the 
blanchisseuse and has lost its substance. A beauti- 
ful skin, I allow you. But so thin — so thin.” 

“The skin, madame ?” inquired the Abbe Touvent, 
with that gentle and cackling humour in which the 
ordained of any church may indulge after a good 
dinner. 

The Abbe Touvent had, as a matter of fact, been 
Madame de Chantonnay’s most patient listener 
334 


MME. DE CHANTONNAY’S THURSDAY 


through the months of suspense that followed Loo 
Barebone’s sudden disappearance. Heedless to say 
he agreed ardently with whatever explanation she 
put forward. Old ladies who give good dinners to a 
low church British curate, or an abbe of the Roman 
confession, or, indeed, to the needy celibate expo- 
nents of any creed whatsoever, may always, it seems, 
count upon the active conversational support of their 
spiritual adviser. And it is not only within the fold 
of Papacy that careful Christians find the road to 
heaven made smooth by the arts of an efficient cook. 

“You know well enough what I mean, malicious 
one,” retorted the lady, arranging her shawl upon 
her fat shoulders. 

“I always think,” murmured the Abbe, sipping his 
digestive glass of eau de vie d’Armagnac, which is 
better than any cognac of Charente — “I always think 
that to be thin shows a mean mind, lacking gener- 
osity.” 

“Take my word for it,” pursued Madame de 
Chantonnay, warming to her subject, “that is the 
explanation of the young man’s disappearance. 
They say the government has taken some under- 
hand way of putting him aside. One does not give 
credence to such rumours in these orderly times. 
No: it is simply that he prefers the pale eyes of 
some mees to glory and Erance. Has it not hap- 
pened before, Abbe?” 


335 


THE LAST HOPE 


“Ah! Madame — ” another sip of Armagnac. 

“And will it not happen again? It is the heart 
that has the first word and the last. I know — I who 
address you, I know!” 

And she touched her breast where, very deeply 
seated it is to be presumed, she kept her own heart. 

“Ah ! madame. Who better ?” murmured the 
Abbe. 

“Ha, na!” exclaimed Madame de Chantonnay, 
holding up one hand, heavy with rings, while with 
the other she gathered her shawl closer about her 
as if for protection. “How you tread on dangerous 
ground, wicked one: wicked! And you so demure 
in your soutane!” 

But the Abbe only laughed and held up his small 
glass after the manner of any abandoned layman 
drinking a toast. 

“Madame,” he said, “I drink to the hearts you 
have broken. And now I go to arrange the card 
tables, for your guests will soon be coming.” 

It was, in fact, Madame de Chantonnay’s Thurs- 
day evening to which were bidden such friends as 
enjoyed for the moment her fickle good graces. The 
Abbe Touvent was, so to speak, a permanent sub- 
scriber to these favours. The task was easy enough, 
and any endowed with a patience to listen, a readi- 
ness to admire that excellent young nobleman, Al- 
bert de Chantonnay, and the credulity necessary to 
336 


MME. DE CHAN TONN AY’S THURSDAY 

listen to the record (more hinted at than clearly 
spoken) of Madame’s own charms in her youth, could 
make sure of a game of dominoes on the evening of 
the third Thursday in the month. 

The Abbe bustled about, drawing cards and tables 
nearer to the lamps, away from the draught of the 
door, not too near the open wood fire. His move- 
ments were dainty, like those of an old maid of the 
last generation. He hissed through his teeth as if 
he were working very hard. It served to stimulate 
a healthy excitement in the Thursday evening of 
Madame de Chantonnay. 

“Oh, I am not uneasy,” said that lady, as she 
watched him. She had dined well and her digestion 
had outlived those charms to which she made such 
frequent reference. “I am not uneasy. He will re- 
turn, more or less sheepish. He will make some ex- 
cuse more or less inadequate. He will tell us a story 
more or less creditable. Allez ! Oh, you men. If 
you intend that chair for Monsieur de Gemosac it is 
the wrong one. Monsieur de Gemosac sits high, but 
his leg£ are short; give him the little chair that 
creaks. If he sits too high he is apt to see over the 
top of one’s cards. And he is so eager to win — the 
good Marquis.” 

“Then he will come to-night despite the cold. You 
think he will come, Madame?” 

“I am sure of it. He has come more frequently 
337 


THE LAST HOPE 

since Juliette came to live at the chateau. It is 
Juliette who makes him come, perhaps. Who 
knows ?” 

The Abbe stopped midway across the floor and set 
down the chair he carried with great caution. 

“Madame is incorrigible,” he said, spreading out 
his hands. “Madame would perceive a romance in 
a cradle.” 

“Well, one must begin somewhere, Materialist. 
Once it was for me that the guests crowded to my 
poor Thursdays. But now it is because Albert is 
near. Ah ! I know it. I say it without jealousy. 
Have you noticed, my dear Abbe, that he has cut his 
whiskers a little shorter — a shade nearer to the ear. 
It is effective, eh ?” 

“It gives an air of hardihood,” assented the Abbe. 
“It lends to that intellectual face something martial. 
I would almost say that to the timorous it might ap- 
pear terrible and overbearing.” 

Thus they talked until the guests began to arrive, 
and for Madame de Chant onnay the time no doubt 
seemed short enough. For no one appreciated Al- 
bert with such a delicacy of touch as the Abbe 
Touvent. 

The Marquis de Gemosac and Juliette were the 
last to arrive. The Marquis looked worn and con- 
siderably aged. He excused himself with a hundred 
gestures of despair for being late. 

338 


MME. DE CHANTONNAY’S THURSDAY 


“I have so much to do,” he whispered. “So much 
to think of. We are leaving no stone unturned, and 
at last we have a clue.” 

The other guests gathered round. 

“But speak, my dear friend, speak,” cried Madame 
de Chantonnay. “You keep us in suspense. Look 
around you. We are among friends, as you see. It 
is only ourselves.” 

“Well,” replied the Marquis, standing upright and 
fingering the snuff-box which had been given to his 
grandfather by the Great Louis. “Well, my friends, 
our invaluable ally, Dormer Colville, has gone to 
England. There is a ray of hope. That is all I can 
tell you.” 

He looked round, smiled on his audience, and then 
proceeded to tell them more, after the manner of 
any Frenchman. 

“What,” he whispered, “if an unscrupulous repub- 
lican government had got scent of our glorious dis- 
covery! What if, panic-stricken, they threw all 
vestige of honour to the wind and decided to kidnap 
an innocent man and send him to the Iceland fish- 
eries, where so many lives are lost every winter; with 
what hopes in their republican hearts, I leave to your 
imagination. What if — let us say it for once — Mon- 
sieur de Bourbon should prove a match for them? 
Alert, hardy, full of resource, a skilled sailor, he 
takes his life in his hand with the daring audacity 
339 


THE LAST HOPE 


of royal blood and effects bis escape to England. I 
tell you nothing ” 

He held up his hands as if to stay their clamouring 
voices, and nodded his head triumphantly toward 
Albert de Chantonnay, who stood near a lamp finger- 
ing his martial whisker of the left side with the air 
of one who would pause at naught. 

“I tell you nothing. But such a theory has been 
pieced together upon excellent material. It may be 
true. It may be a dream. And, as I tell you, our 
dear friend Dormer Colville, who has nothing at 
stake, who loses or gains little by the restoration of 
France, has journeyed to England for us. Hone 
could execute the commission so capably, or without 
danger of arousing suspicion. There! I have told 
you all I know. We must wait, my compatriots. We 
must wait.” 

“And in the meantime,” purred the voice of the 
Abbe Touvent, “for the digestion, Monsieur le Mar- 
quis — for the digestion.” 

For it was one of the features of Madame de 
Chantonnay’s Thursdays that no servants were al- 
lowed in the room; but the guests waited on each 
other. If the servants, as is to be presumed, listened 
outside the door, they were particular not to intro- 
duce each succeeding guest without first knocking, 
which caused a momentary silence and added con- 
340 


MME. DE CHANTONNAY’S THURSDAY 

siderably to the sense of political importance of 
those assembled. The Abbe Touvent made it his 
special care to preside over the table where small 
glasses of Eau-de-Vie d’Armagnac and other aids to 
digestion were set out in a careful profusion. 

“It is a theory, my dear Marquis,” admitted 
Madame de Chantonnay. “But it is nothing more. 
It has no heart in it, your theory. Now I have a 
theory of my own.” 

“Full of heart, one may assure oneself, madame; 
full of heart,” murmured the Marquis. “For you 
yourself are full of heart — is it not so ?” 

“I hope not,” Juliette whispered to her fan, with 
a little smile of malicious amusement. For she had 
a youthful contempt for persons old and stout, who 
talk ignorantly of matters only understood by such 
as are young and slim and pretty. She looked at her 
fan with a gleam of ill-concealed irony and glanced 
over it toward Albert de Chantonnay, who, with a 
consideration which must have been hereditary, was 
uneasy about the alteration he had made in his 
whiskers. It was, perhaps, unfair, he felt, to harrow 
young and tender hearts. 

It was at this moment that a loud knock com- 
manded a breathless silence ; for no more guests were 
expected. Indeed the whole neighbourhood was 
present- 


341 


THE LAST HOPE 


The servant, in his faded gold lace, came in and 
announced with a dramatic assurance : “Monsieur de 
Borbone — Monsieur Colville.” 

And that difference which Dormer Colville had 
predicted was manifested with an astounding 
promptness; for all who were seated rose to their 
feet. It was Colville who had given the names to 
the servant in the order in which they had been an- 
nounced, and at the last minute, on the threshold, 
he had stepped on one side and with his hand on 
Barebone’s shoulder had forced him to take prece- 
dence. 

The first person Barebone saw on entering the room 
was J uliette, standing under the spreading arms of a 
chandelier, half turned to look at him. Juliette, in 
all the freshness of her girlhood and her first evening 
dress, flushing pink and white like a wild rose; her 
eyes, bright with a sudden excitement, seeking his. 

Behind her, the Marquis de Gemosac, Albert de 
Chantonnay, his mother, and all the Royalists of the 
province, gathered in a semicircle, by accident or 
some tacit instinct, leaving only the girl standing out 
in front, beneath the chandelier. They bowed with 
that grave, almost mystic self-possession which falls 
like a cloak over the shoulders of such as are of an- 
cient and historic lineage. 

“We reached the chateau of Gemosac only a few 
minutes after Monsieur le Marquis and Mademoiselle 
342 


MME. DE CHAYTONNAY’S THURSDAY 


had quitted it to come here,” Barebone explained to 
Madame de Chantonnay ; “and trusting to the good- 
nature — so widely famed — of Madame la Comtesse, 
we hurriedly removed the dust of travel, and took the 
liberty of following them hither.” 

“You have not taken me by surprise,” replied Ma- 
dame de Chantonnay. “I expected you. Ask the Abbe 
Touvent. He will tell you, gentlemen, that I expected 
you.” 

As Barebone turned away to speak to the Marquis 
and others, who were pressing forward to greet him, 
it became apparent that that mantle of imperturb- 
ability, which millions made in trade can never buy, 
had fallen upon his shoulders, too. For most men 
are, in the end, forced to play the part the world 
assigns to them. We are not allowed to remain what 
we know ourselves to be, but must, at last, be that 
which the world thinks us. 

Madame de Chantonnay, murmuring to a neigh- 
bour a mystic reference to her heart and its volu- 
minous premonitions, watched him depart with a 
vague surprise. 

“Mon Dieu! mon Dieu!” she whispered, breath- 
lessly. “It is not a resemblance. It is the dead come 
to life again.” 


343 


CHAPTER XXXII 


PRIMROSES 

“If I go on, I go alone,” Barebone had once said 
to Dormer Colville. The words, spoken in the heat 
of a quarrel, stuck in the memory of both, as such are 
wont to do. Perhaps, in moments of anger or dis- 
illusionment — when we find that neither self nor 
friend is what we thought — the heart tears itself away 
from the grip of the cooler, calmer brain and speaks 
untrammelled. And such speeches are apt to linger 
in the mind long after the most brilliant jeu d’esprit 
has been forgotten. 

What occupies the thoughts of the old man, sitting 
out the grey remainder of the day, over the embers 
of a hearth which he will only quit when he quits the 
world ? Does he remember the brilliant sallies of wit, 
the greatest triumphs of the noblest minds with which 
he has consorted; or does his memory cling to some 
scene — simple, pastoral, without incident — which 
passed before his eyes at a moment when his heart 
was sore or glad ? When his mind is resting from its 
344 


PRIMROSES 


labours and the sound of the grinding is low, he will 
scarce remember the neat saying or the lofty thought 
clothed in perfect language ; hut he will never forget 
a hasty word spoken in an unguarded moment by one 
who was not clever at all, nor even possessed the 
worldly wisdom to shield the heart behind the buckler 
of the brain. 

“You will find things changed,” Colville had said, 
as they walked across the marsh from Farlingford, 
toward the Ipswich road. And the words came back 
to the minds of both, on that Thursday of Madame 
de Chantonnay, which many remember to this day. 
Not only did they find things changed, but themselves 
they found no longer the same. Both remembered 
the quarrel, and the outcome of it. 

Colville, ever tolerant, always leaning toward the 
compromise that eases a doubting conscience, had, it 
would almost seem unconsciously, prepared the way 
for a reconciliation before there was any question of 
a difference. On their way back to France, without 
directly referring to that fatal portrait and the revela- 
tion caused by Barebone’s unaccountable feat of mem- 
ory, he had smoothed away any possible scruple. 

“France must always be deceived,” he had said, a 
hundred times. “Better that she should be deceived 
for an honest than a dishonest purpose — if it is decep- 
tion, after all, which is very doubtful. The best pa- 
triot is he who is ready to save his country at the cost 
345 


THE LAST HOPE 


of his own ease, whether of body or of mind. It does 
not matter who or what you are ; it is what, or who, 
the world thinks you to be, that is of importance.” 

Which of us has not listened to a score of such ar- 
guments, not always from the lips of a friend, but 
most often in that still, small voice which rarely has 
the courage to stand out against the tendency of the 
age ? There is nothing so contagious as laxity of con- 
science. 

Barebone listened to the good-natured, sympathetic 
voice with a make-believe conviction which was part 
of his readiness to put off an evil moment. Colville 
was a difficult man to quarrel with. It seemed bear- 
ish and ill-natured to take amiss any word or action 
which could only be the outcome of a singularly ten- 
der consideration for the feelings of others. 

But when they entered Madame de Chantonnay’s 
drawing-room — when Dormer, impelled by some in- 
stinct of the fitness of things, stepped aside and mo- 
tioned to his companion to pass in first — the secret 
they had in common yawned suddenly like a gulf 
between them. Eor the possession of a secret either 
estranges or draws together. More commonly, it es- 
tranges. For which of us is careful of a secret that 
redounds to our credit ? Nearly every secret is a hid- 
den disgrace ; and such a possession, held in common 
with another, is not likely to insure affection. 

Colville lingered on the threshold, watching Loo 
346 


PRIMROSES 


make the first steps of that progress which must hence- 
forth be pursued alone. He looked round for a 
friendly face, but no one had eyes for him. They 
were all looking at Loo Barebone. Colville sought 
Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, usually in full evidence, 
even in a room full of beautiful women and distin- 
guished men. But she was not there. For a minute 
or two no one noticed him ; and then Albert de Chan- 
tonnay, remembering his role, came forward to greet 
the Englishman. 

“It was,” explained Colville, in a lowered voice, 
“as we thought. An attempt was made to get him 
out of the way, but he effected his escape. He knew, 
however, the danger of attempting to communicate 
with any of us by post, and was awaiting some oppor- 
tunity of transmitting a letter by a safe hand, when 
I discovered his hiding-place.” 

And this was the story that went half round France, 
from lip to lip, among those who were faithful to the 
traditions of a glorious past. 

“Madame St. Pierre Lawrence,” Albert de Chan- 
tonnay told Colville, in reply, “is not here to-night. 
She is, however, at her villa, at Royan. She has not, 
perhaps, displayed such interest in our meetings as 
she did before you departed on your long journey 
through France. But her generosity is unchanged. 
The money, which, in the hurry of the moment, you 

did not withdraw from her bank ” 

347 


THE LAST HOPE 


“I doubt whether it was ever there/’ interrupted 
Dormer Colville. 

“She informs me/’ concluded Albert, “is still at 
our service. We have many other promises, which 
must now be recalled to the minds of those who made 
them. But from no one have we received such gener- 
ous support as from your kinswoman.” 

They were standing apart, and in a few minutes 
the Marquis de Gemosac joined them. 

“How daring ! how audacious !” he whispered, “and 
yet how opportune, this return. It is all to be recom- 
menced, my friends, with a firmer grasp, a new cour- 
age.” 

“But my task is accomplished,” returned Colville. 
“You have no further use for a mere Englishman, 
like myself. I was fortunate in being able to lend 
some slight assistance in the original discovery of our 
friend; I have again been lucky enough to restore 
him to you. And now, with your permission, I will 
return to Boyan, where I have my little apartment, 
as you know.” 

He looked from one to the other, with his melan- 
choly and self-deprecating smile. 

“Voila,” he added; “it remains for me to pay my 
respects to Madame de Chantonnay. We have trav- 
elled far, and I am tired. I shall ask her to excuse 
me.” 

“And Monsieur de Bourbon comes to Gemosac. 
348 


PRIMROSES 


That is understood. He will be safe there. His apart- 
ments have been in readiness for him these last two 
months. Hidden there, or in other dwellings — grand- 
er and better served, perhaps, than my poor ruin, but 
no safer — he can continue the great work he began 
so well last winter. As for you, my dear Colville,” 
continued the Marquis, taking the Englishman’s two 
hands in his, “I envy you from the bottom of my 
heart. It is not given to many to serve France as you 
have served her — to serve a king as you have served 
one. It will be my business to see that both remember 
you. For France, I allow, sometimes forgets. Go 
to Royan, since you wish — but it is only for a time. 
You will be called to Paris some day, that I promise 
you.” 

The Marquis would have embraced him then and 
there, had the cool-blooded Englishman shown the 
smallest desire for that honour. But Dormer Col- 
ville’s sad and doubting smile held at arms’ length 
one who was always at the mercy of his own elo- 
quence. 

The card tables had lost their attraction ; and, al- 
though many parties were formed, and the cards were 
dealt, the players fell to talking across the ungathered 
tricks, and even the Abbe Touvent was caught trip- 
ping in the matter of a point. 

“Never,” exclaimed Madame de Chantonnay, as 
her guests took leave at their wonted hour, and some 
349 


THE LAST HOPE 


of them even later — “never have I had a Thursday 
so dull and yet so full of incident.” 

“And never, madame,” replied the Marquis, still 
on tiptoe, as it were, with delight and excitement, 
“shall we see another like it.” 

Loo went back to Gemosac with the fluttering old 
man and Juliette. Juliette, indeed, was in no flutter, 
but had carried herself through the excitement of her 
first evening party with a demure little air of self- 
possession. 

She had scarce spoken to Loo during the evening. 
Indeed, it had been his duty to attend on Madame de 
Chantonnay and on the older members of these quiet 
Royalist families, biding their time in the remote 
country villages of Guienne and the Vendee. 

On the journey home, the Marquis had so much to 
tell his companion, and told it so hurriedly, that his 
was the only voice heard above the rattle of the heavy, 
old-fashioned carriage. But Barebone was aware of 
Juliette’s presence in a dark corner of the roomy ve- 
hicle, and his eyes, seeking to penetrate the gloom, 
could just distinguish hers, which seemed to be turned 
in his direction. 

Many changes had been effected at the chateau, and 
a suite of rooms had been prepared for Barebone in 
the detached building known as the Italian house, 
which stands in the midst of the garden within the 
enceinte of the chateau walls. 

350 


PRIMROSES 


“I have been able,” explained the Marquis, frankly, 
a to obtain a small advance on the results of last au- 
tumn’s vintage. My notary in the village found, in- 
deed, that facilities were greater than he had antici- 
pated. With this sum, I have been enabled to effect 
some necessary repairs to the buildings and the inter- 
nal decorations. I had fallen behind the times, per- 
haps. But now that Juliette is installed as chate- 
laine, many changes have been effected. You will 
see, my dear friend ; you will see for yourself. Yes, 
for the moment, I am no longer a pauper. As you 
yourself will have noticed, in your journey through 
the west, rural France is enjoying a sudden return 
of prosperity. It is unaccountable. No one can make 
me believe that it is to be ascribed to this scandalous 
Government, under which we agonise. But there it 
is — and we must thank Heaven for it.” 

Which was only the truth. For France was at this 
time entering upon a period of plenty. The air was 
full of rumours of new railways, new roads, and new 
commercial enterprise. Banks were being opened in 
the provincial towns, and loans made on easy terms 
to agriculturists for the improvement of their land. 

Barebone found that there were indeed changes in 
the old chateau. The apartments above that which 
had once been the stabling, hitherto occupied by the 
Marquis, had been added to and a slight attempt at re- 
decoration had been made. There was no lack of 
351 


THE LAST HOPE 


rooms, and Juliette now had her own suite, while 
the Marquis lived, as hitherto, in three small apart- 
ments over the rooms occupied by Marie and her 
husband. 

An elderly relation — one of those old ladies hab- 
ited in black, who are ready to efface themselves all 
day and occupy a garret all night, in return for bed 
and board, had been added to the family. She con- 
tributed a silent and mysterious presence, some 
worldly wisdom, and a profound respect for her noble 
kinsman. 

“She is quite harmless,” Juliette explained, gaily, 
to Barebone, on the first occasion when they were 
alone together. This did not present itself until Loo 
had been quartered in the Italian house for some days, 
with his own servant. Although he took luncheon 
and dinner with the family in the old building near 
to the gate-house, and, indeed, spent his evenings in 
Juliette’s drawing-room, the Marquis or Madame 
Maugiron was always present; and as often as not, 
they played a game of chess together. 

“She is quite harmless,” said Juliette, tying, with 
a thread, the primroses she had been picking in that 
shady corner of the garden which lay at the other side 
of the Italian house. The windows of Barebone’s 
apartment, by the way, looked down upon this gar- 
den ; and he, having perceived her, had not wasted 
time in joining her in the morning sunshine. 

352 


PRIMROSES 


“She is quite harmless. I wonder if I shall be as 
harmless when I am her age.” 

And, indeed, danger lurked beneath her lashes as 
she glanced at him, asking this question with her lips 
and a hundred others with her eyes, with her gay air 
of youth and happiness — with her very attitude of 
coquetry, as she stood in the spring sunshine, with the 
scent of the primroses about her. 

“I think that any one who approaches you will 
always do so at his peril, mademoiselle.” 

“Then why do it ?” she asked, drawing back and 
busying herself with the flowers, which she laid 
against her breast, as if to judge the effect of 
their colour against the delicate white of her dress. 
“Why run into danger ? Why come downstairs 
at all ?” 

“Why breathe ?” he retorted, with a laugh. “Why 
eat, or drink, or sleep ? Why live ? Mon Dieu ! be- 
cause there is no choice. And when I see you in the 
garden, there is no choice for me, mademoiselle. I 
must come down and run into danger, because I can- 
not help it any more than I can help ” 

“But you need not stay,” she interrupted, cleverly. 
“A brave man may always retire from danger into 
safety.” 

“But he may not always want to, mademoiselle.” 
“Ah!” 

And, with a shrug of the shoulders, she inserted the 

353 


THE LAST HOPE 

primroses within a very small waistband and turned 
away. 

“Will you give me those primroses, mademoiselle ?” 
asked Loo, without moving; for, although she had 
turned to go, she had not gone. 

She turned on her heel and looked at him, with de- 
mure surprise, and then bent her head to look at the 
flowers at her own waist. 

“They are mine,” she answered, standing in that 
pretty attitude, her hair half concealing her face. “I 
picked them myself.” 

“Two reasons why I want them.” 

“Ah ! but,” she said, with a suggestion of thought- 
fulness, “one does not always get what one wants. 
You ask a great deal, monsieur.” 

“There is no limit to what I would ask, mademoi- 
selle.” 

She laughed gaily. 

“If — ” she inquired, with raised eyebrows. 

“If I dared.” 

Again she looked at him with that little air of sur- 
prise. 

“But I thought you were so brave ?” she said. “So 
reckless of danger? A brave man assuredly does not 
ask. He takes that which he would have.” 

It happened that she had clasped her hands behind 
her back, leaving the primroses at her waist uncovered 
and half falling from the ribbon. 

354 


PRIMROSES 


In a moment he had reached out his hand and taken 
them. She leapt back, as if she feared that he might 
take more, and ran hack toward the house, placing a 
rough tangle of brier, already coming into bloom, be- 
tween herself and this robber. Her laughing face 
looked at him between the roses. 

“You have your primroses,” she said, “but I did 
not give them to you. You want too much, I think.” 

“I want what that ribbon binds,” he answered. 
But she turned away and ran toward the house, with- 
out waiting to hear. 


355 


CHAPTER XXXIII 


DORMER COLVILLE IS BLIND 

It was late when Dormer Colville reached the quiet 
sea-coast village of Royan on the evening of his re- 
turn to the west. He did not seek Mrs. St. Pierre 
Lawrence until the luncheon hour next morning, 
when he was informed that she was away from home. 

“Madame has gone to Paris,” the man said, who, 
with his wife, was left in charge of the empty house. 
“It was a sudden resolution, one must conclude,” he 
added, darkly, “but Madame took no one into her con- 
fidence. She received news by post, which must have 
brought about this sudden decision.” 

Colville was intimately acquainted with his 
cousin’s affairs; indeed, many hazarded an opinion 
that, without the help of Madame St. Pierre Law- 
rence, this rolling stone would have been bare enough. 
She had gone to Paris for one of two reasons, he con- 
cluded. Either she had expected him to return 
thither from London, and had gone to meet him with 
the intention of coming to some arrangement as to the 
disposal of the vast sum of money now in Turner’s 
356 


DORMER COLVILLE IS BLIND 

hands awaiting further developments, or some hitch 
had occurred with respect to John Turner himself. 

Dormer Colville returned, thoughtfully, to his 
lodging, and in the evening set out for Paris. 

He had, himself, not seen Turner since that morn- 
ing in the banker’s office in the Rue Lafayette, when 
they had parted so unceremoniously, in a somewhat 
heated spirit. But, on reflection, Colville, who had 
sought to reassure .himself with regard to one whose 
name stood for the incarnation of gastronomy and 
mental density in the Anglo-French clubs of Paris, 
had come to the conclusion that nothing was to be 
gained by forcing a quarrel upon Turner. It was im- 
possible to bring home to him an accusation of com- 
plicity in an outrage which had been carried through 
with remarkable skill. And when it is impossible to 
force home an accusation, a wise man will hold his 
tongue. 

Colville could not prove that Turner had known 
Barebone to be in the carriage waiting in the court- 
yard, and his own action in the matter had been lim- 
ited to the interposition of his own clumsy person 
between Colville and the window ; which might, after 
all, have been due to stupidity. This, as a matter of 
fact, was Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence’s theory on the 
subject. For that lady, resting cheerfully on the firm 
basis of a self-confidence which the possession of 
money nearly always confers on women, had laughed 
357 


THE LAST HOPE 


at Turner all her life, and now proposed to continue 
that course of treatment. 

“Take my word,” she had assured Colville, “he was 
only acting in his usual dense way, and probably 
thinks now that you are subject to brief fits of mental 
aberration. I am not afraid of him or anything that 
he can do. Leave him to me, and devote all your 
attention to finding Loo Barebone again.” 

Upon which advice Colville had been content to 
act. He had a faith in Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence’s 
wit which was almost as great as her own; and 
thought, perhaps rightly enough, that if anyone were 
a match for John Turner it was his sprightly and 
capable client. Eor there are two ways of getting on 
in this world : one is to get credit for being cleverer 
than you are, and the other to be cleverer than your 
neighbour suspects. But the latter plan is seldom 
followed, for the satisfaction it provides must neces- 
sarily be shared with no confidant. 

Colville knew where to look for Mrs. St. Pierre 
Lawrence in Paris, where she always took an apart- 
ment in a quiet and old-fashioned hotel rejoicing in 
a select Boyalist clientele on the Place Vendome. On 
arriving at the capital, he hurried thither, and was 
told that the lady he sought had gone out a few min- 
utes earlier. “But Madame’s maid,” the porter 
added, “is no doubt within.” 

Colville was conducted to Mrs. St. Pierre Law- 
358 


DORMER COLVILLE IS BLIND 


fence’s room, and was hardly there before the lady’s 
French maid came hurrying in with upraised hands. 

“A just Heaven has assuredly sent Monsieur at this 
moment,” she exclaimed. “Madame only quitted this 
room ten minutes ago, and she was agitated — she, who 
is usually so calm. She would tell me nothing; but 
I know — I, who have done Madame’s hair these ten 
years ! And there is only one thing that could cause 
her anxiety, I know — except, of course, any mishap 
to Monsieur ; that would touch the heart — yes !” 

“You are very kind, Catherine,” said Colville, with 
a laugh, “to think me so important. Is that letter for 
me ?” And he pointed to a note in the woman’s hand. 

“But — yes!” was the reply; and she gave up the 
letter, somewhat reluctantly. “There is only one 
thing, and that is money,” she concluded, watching 
him tear open the envelope. 

“I am going to John Turner’s office,” Mrs. St. 
Pierre Lawrence wrote. “If, by some lucky chance, 
you should pass through Paris, and happen to call 
this morning, follow me to the Rue Lafayette. M. 
St. P. L.” 

It was plain enough. Colville reflected that Mrs. 
St. Pierre Lawrence had heard of the success of his 
mission to England and the safe return to Gemosac 
of Loo Barebone. For the moment, he could not think 
how the news could have reached her. She might 
have heard it from Miriam Liston; for their journey 
359 


THE LAST HOPE 


back to Gemosac had occupied nearly a week. On 
learning the good news, Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence 
had promptly grasped the situation ; for she was very 
quick in thought and deed. The money would be 
wanted at once. She had gone to Turner’s office to 
withdraw it in person. 

Dormer Colville bought a flower in a shop in the 
Rue de la Paix, and had it affixed to his button-hole 
by the handmaid of Flora, who made it her business 
to linger over the office with a gentle familiarity no 
doubt pleasing enough to the majority of her clients. 

Colville was absent-minded as he drove, in a hired 
carriage, to the Rue Lafayette. He was wondering 
whether Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence’s maid had any 
grounds for stating that a mishap to him would touch 
her mistress’s heart. He was a man of unbounded 
enterprise ; but, like many who are gamblers at heart, 
he was superstitious. He had never dared to try his 
luck with Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence. She was so 
hard, so worldly, so infinitely capable of managing 
her own affairs and regulating her own life, that to 
offer her his hand and heart in exchange for her for- 
\ tune had hitherto been dismissed from his mind as a 
last expedient, only to be faced when ruin awaited 
him. 

She had only been a widow three years. She had 
never been a sentimental woman ; and now her liberty 
and her wealth were obviously so dear to her that, in 
360 


DORMER COLVILLE IS BLIND 


common sense, he could scarcely, with any prospect 
of success, ask her outright to part with them. More- 
over, Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence knew all about Dor- 
mer Colville, as men say. Which js only a saying ; 
for no human being knows all about another human 
being, nor one-half, nor one-tenth of what there is to 
know. Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence knew enough, at 
all events, Colville reflected, rather ruefully, to dis- 
illusionise a schoolgirl, much more a woman of the 
world, knowing good and evil. 

He had not lived forty years in the world, and 
twenty years in that world of French culture which 
digs and digs into human nature, without having 
heard philosophers opine that, in matters of the heart, 
women have no illusions at all, and that it is only men 
who go blindfold into the tortuous ways of love. But 
he was too practical a man to build up a false hope 
on so frail a basis as a theory applied to a woman’s 
heart. 

He bought a flower for his buttonhole, then, and 
squared his shoulders, without any definite design. 
It was a mere habit — the habit acquired by twenty 
years of unsuccessful enterprise, and renewed effort 
and deferred hope — of leaving no stone unturned. 

His cab wheeled into the Rue Lafayette, and the 
man drove more slowly, reading the numbers on the 
houses. Then he stopped altogether, and turned 
round in his seat. 


361 


THE LAST HOPE 


“Citizen,” he said, “there is a great crowd at the 
house you named. It extends half across the street. 
I will go no further. It is not I who care about 
publicity.” 

Colville stood up and looked in the direction indi- 
cated by his driver’s whip. The man had scarcely 
exaggerated. A number of people were awaiting their 
turn on the pavement and out into the roadway, while 
two gendarmes held the door. Dormer Colville paid 
his cabman and walked into that crowd, with a sink- 
ing heart. 

“It is the great English banker,” explained an 
on-looker, even before he was asked, “who has 
failed.” 

Colville had never found any difficulty in making 
his way through a crowd — a useful accomplishment 
in Paris at all times, where government is conducted, 
thrones are raised and toppled over, provinces are 
won and lost again, by the mob. He had that air of 
distinction which, if wielded good-naturedly, is the 
surest passport in any concourse. Some, no doubt, 
recognised him as an Englishman. One after another 
made way for him. Persons unknown to him com- 
manded others to step aside and let him pass ; for the 
busybody we have always with us. 

In a few minutes he was at the top of the stairs, 
and there elbowed his way into the office, where the 
five clerks sat bent up over their ledgers. The space 
362 


DORMER COLVILLE IS BLIND 

on the hither side of the counter was crammed with 
men, who whispered impatiently together. If any- 
one raised his voice, the clerk whose business it was 
lifted his head and looked at the speaker with a mute 
surprise. 

One after another these white-faced applicants 
leant over the counter. 

“Voyons, monsieur!” they urged; “tell me this or 
inform me of that.” 

But the clerk only smiled and shook his head. 

“Patience, monsieur,” he answered. “I cannot tell 
you yet. We are awaiting advices from London.” 

“But when will you receive them ?” inquired sev- 
eral, at once. 

“It may be to-morrow. It may not be for several 
days.” 

“But can one see Mr. Turner ?” inquired one, more 
daring than the rest. 

“He is engaged.” 

Colville caught the eye of the clerk, and by a ges- 
ture made it known that he must be allowed to pass 
on into the inner room. Once more his air of the 
great world, his good clothes, his flower in the button- 
hole, perhaps, gave him the advantage over others; 
and the clerk got down from his stool. 

“Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence is with him, I know,” 
whispered Colville. “I come by appointment to meet 
her here.” 


363 


THE LAST HOPE 


He was shown in without further trouble, and 
found Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence sitting, white-faced 
and voluble, in the visitors 7 chair. 

John Turner had his usual air of dense placidity, 
but the narrow black tie he always tied in a bow was 
inclined slightly to one side ; his hair was ruffled, and, 
although the weather was not warm, his face wore a 
shiny look. Any banker, with his clients clamouring 
on the stairs and out into the street, might look as 
John Turner looked. 

“You have heard the news ?” asked Mrs. St. Pierre 
Lawrence, turning sharply in her chair and looking 
at Colville with an expression of sudden relief. She 
carried a handkerchief in her hand, but her eyes were 
dry. She was, after all, only a forerunner of those 
who now propose to manage human affairs. And even 
in these later days of their great advance, they have 
not left their pocket-handkerchiefs behind them. 

“I was told by one of the crowd / 7 replied Colville, 
with a side smile full of sympathy for Turner, “that 
the — er — bank had come to grief . 77 

“Was just telling Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence , 77 said 
Turner, imperturbably, “that it is too early in the 
day to throw up the sponge and cry out that all is 
lost . 77 

“All !” echoed Colville, angrily. “But do you mean 
to say — Why surely, there is generally something 
left . 77 


364 


DORMER COLVILLE IS BLIND 


Turner shrugged his shoulders and sat in silence, 
gnawing the middle joint of his thumb. 

“But I must have the money !” cried Mrs. St. Pierre 
Lawrence. “It is most important; and I must have 
it at once. I withdraw it all. See, I brought my 
cheque-book with me. And I know that there are over 
a hundred thousand pounds in my account. As well 
as that, you hold securities for two hundred and fifty 
thousand more — my whole fortune. The money is 
not yours : it is mine. I draw it all out, and I insist 
on having it.” 

Turner continued to bite his thumb, and glanced 
at her without speaking. 

“Now, damn it all, Turner!” said Colville, in a 
voice suddenly hoarse ; “hand it over, man.” 

“I tell you it is gone,” was the answer. 

“What ? Three hundred and fifty thousand 
pounds ? Then you are a rogue ! You are a fraudu- 
lent trustee ! I always thought you were a damned 
scoundrel, Turner, and now I know it. I’ll get you 
to the galleys for the rest of your life, I promise you 
that.” 

“You will gain nothing by that,” returned the 
banker, staring at the date-card in front of him. “And 
you will lose any chance there is of recovering some- 
thing from the wreck. Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence had 
better take the advice of her lawyer — in preference 
to yours.” 


365 


THE LAST HOPE 


“Then I am ruined !” said that lady, rising, with 
an air of resolution. She was brave, at all events. 

“At the present moment, it looks like it,” admitted 
Turner, without meeting her eye. 

“What am I to do?” murmured Mrs. St. Pierre 
Lawrence, looking helplessly round the room and 
finally at the banker’s stolid face. 

“Like the rest of us, I suppose,” he admitted. “Be- 
gin the world afresh. Perhaps your friends will come 
forward.” 

And he looked calmly toward Dormer Colville. 
Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence’s face suddenly flushed, and 
she turned away toward the door. Turner rose, labo- 
riously, and opened it. 

“There is another staircase through this side door,” 
he said, opening a second door, which had the appear- 
ance of a cupboard. “You can avoid the crowd.” 

They passed out together; and Turner, having 
closed the door behind them, crossed the room to where 
a small mirror was suspended. He set his tie straight 
and smoothed his hair, and then returned to his chair, 
with a vague smile on his face. 

Colville took the vacant seat in Mrs. St. Pierre 
Lawrence’s brougham. She still held a handkerchief 
in her hand. 

“I do not mind for myself,” she exclaimed, sud- 
denly, when the carriage moved out of the court-yard. 
“It is only for your sake, Dormer.” 

366 


DORMER COLVILLE IS BLIND 


She turned and glanced at him with eyes that shone, 
but not with tears. 

“Oh ! Don’t you understand ?” she asked, in a 
whisper. “Don’t you see, Dormer?” 

“A way out of it ?” he answered, hurriedly, almost 
interrupting her. He withdrew his hand, upon which 
she had laid her own; withdrew it sympathetically, 
almost tenderly. “See a way out of it ?” he repeated, 
in a reflective and business-like voice. “No, I am 
afraid, for the moment, I don’t.” 

He sat stroking his moustache, looking out of the 
window, while she looked out of the other, resolutely 
blinking back her tears. They drove back to her hotel 
without speaking. 


367 


CHAPTER XXXIV 


A SORDID MATTER 

“Bon Dieu ! my old friend, what do you expect ?” 
replied Madame de Chantonnay to a rather inco- 
herent statement made to her one May afternoon by 
the Marquis de Gemosac. “It is the month of May,” 
she further explained, indicating with a gesture of 
her dimpled hand the roses abloom all around them. 
For the Marquis had found her in a chair beneath 
the mulberry-tree in the old garden of that house 
near Gemosac which looks across the river toward 
the sea. “It is the month of May. One is young. 
Such things have happened since the world began. 
They will happen until it ends, Marquis. It hap- 
pened in our own time, if I remember correctly.” 

And Madame de Chantonnay heaved a prodigious 
sigh in memory of the days that were no more. 

“Given, a young man of enterprise and not bad 
looking, I allow. He has the grand air and his face 
is not without distinction. Given, a young girl, fresh 
as a flower, young, innocent, not without feeling. Ah ! 
I know, for I was like that myself. Place them in 
a garden, in the springtime. What will they talk of 
368 


A SORDID MATTER 


— politics ? Ah — bah ! my friend. Let them have 
long evenings together while their elders play chess 
or a hand at bezique. What game will they play ? A 
much older game than chess or bezique, I fancy.” 

“But the circumstances were so exceptional,” pro- 
tested the Marquis, who had a pleased air, as if his 
anger w T ere not without an antidote. 

“Circumstances may be exceptional, my friend, but 
Love is a Rule. You allow him to stay six weeks in 
the chateau, seeing Juliette daily, and then you are 
surprised that one fine morning Monsieur de Bour- 
bon comes to you and tells you brusquely, as you re- 
port it, that he wants to marry your daughter.” 

“Yes,” admitted the Marquis. “He was what you 
may describe as brusque. It is the English way, per- 
haps, of treating such matters,. Now, for myself I 
should have been warmer, I think. I should have 
allowed myself a little play, as it were. One says a 
few pretty things, is it not so? One suggests that 
the lady is an angel and oneself entirely unworthy of 
a happiness which is only to be compared with the 
happiness that is promised to us in the hereafter. It 
is an occasion upon which to he eloquent.” 

“Not for the English,” corrected Madame de Chan- 
tonnay, holding up a hand to emphasise her opinion. 
“And you must remember, that although our friend 
is French, he has been brought up in that cold coun- 
try — by a minister of their frozen religion, I under- 
369 


THE LAST HOPE 


stand. I, who speak to you, know what they are, for 
once I had an Englishman in love with me. It was 
in Paris, when Louis XVIII. was King. And did 
this Englishman tell me that he w T as heart-broken, I 
ask you ? Never ! On the contrary, he appeared to 
be of an indifference only to be compared with the 
indifference of a tree, my friend. He seemed to avoid 
me rather than seek my society. Once, he made be- 
lieve to forget that he had been presented to me. A 
ruse — a mere ruse to conceal his passion. But I 
knew, I knew always.” 

“And what was the poor man’s fate ? What was 
his name, Comtesse ?” 

“I forget, my friend. For the moment I have for- 
gotten it. But tell me more about Monsieur de Bour- 
bon and Juliette. He is passionately in love with 
her, of course ; he is so miserable.” 

The Marquis reflected for a few moments. 

“Well,” he said, at last, “he may be so; he may be 
so, Comtesse.” 

“And you — what did you say ?” 

The Marquis looked carefully round before reply- 
ing. Then he leant forward with his forefinger raised 
delicately to the tip of his nose. 

“I temporised, Comtesse,” he said, in a low voice. 
“I explained as gracefully as one could that it was too 
early to think of such a development — that I was 
taken by surprise.” 


370 


A SORDID MATTER 


“ Which could hardly have been true/’ put in Ma- 
dame de Chantonnay in an audible aside to the mul- 
berry-tree, “for neither Guienne nor la Vendee will 
be taken by surprise.” 

“I said, in other words — a good many words, the 
more the better, for one must be polite — ‘Secure your 
throne, monsieur, and you shall marry Juliette.’ But 
it is not a position into which one hurries the last 
of the house of Gemosac — to be the wife of an un- 
successful claimant, eh?” 

Madame de Chantonnay approved in one gesture 
of her stout hand of these principles and of the Mar- 
quis de Gemosac’ s masterly demonstration of them. 

“And Monsieur de Bourbon — did he accept these 
conditions ?” 

“He seemed to, madame. He seemed content to 
do so,” replied the Marquis, tapping his snuff-box 
and avoiding the lady’s eye. 

“And Juliette?” inquired Madame, with a side- 
long glance. 

“Oh, Juliette is sensible,” replied the fond father. 
“My daughter is, I hope, sensible, Comtesse.” 

“Give yourself no uneasiness, my old friend,” said 
Madame de Chantonnay, heartily. “She is charin- 
ing.” 

Madame sat back in her chair and fanned herself 
thoughtfully. It was the fashion of that day to carry 
a fan and wield it with grace and effect. To fan 
371 


THE LAST HOPE 


oneself did not mean that the heat was oppressive 
any more than the use of incorrect English signifies 
to-day ill-breeding or a lack of education. Both are 
an indication of a laudable desire to be unmistakably 
in the movement of one’s day. 

Over her fan Madame cast a sidelong glance at the 
Marquis, whom she, like many of his friends, sus- 
pected of being much less simple and spontaneous 
than he appeared. 

“Then they are not formally affianced ?” she sug- 
gested. 

“Mon Dieu! no. I clearly indicated that there 
were other things to be thought of at the present 
time. A very arduous task lies before him, but he is 
equal to it, I am certain. My conviction as to that 
grows as one knows him better.” 

“But you are not prepared to allow the young peo- 
ple to force you to take a leap in the dark,” suggested 
Madame de Chantonnay. “And that poor Juliette 
must consume her soul in patience — but she is sensi- 
ble, as you justly say. Yes, my dear Marquis, she 
is charming.” 

They were thus engaged in facile talk when Albert 
de Chantonnay emerged from the long window of his 
study, a room opening on to a moss-grown terrace, 
where this plotter walked to and fro like another 
Richelieu and brooded over nation-shaking schemes. 

He carried a letter in his hand and wore an air 

372 


A SORDID MATTER 

of genuine perturbment. But even in his agitation 
he looked carefully round before he spoke. 

“Here,” he said to the Marquis and his fond mother, 
who watched him with complacency — “here I have a 
letter from Dormer Colville. It is necessarily couched 
in very cautious language. He probably knows, as 
I know, that any letter addressed to me is liable to 
be opened. I have reason to believe that some of my 
letters have not only been opened, but that copies 
of them are actually in the possession of that man 
— the head of that which is called the Government.” 

He turned and looked darkly into a neighbouring 
clump of rhododendrons, as if Louis Napoleon were 
perhaps lurking there. But he was nevertheless quite 
right in his suspicions, which were verified twenty 
years later, along with much duplicity which none 
had suspected. 

“Nevertheless,” he went on, “I know what Colville 
seeks to convey to us, and is now hurrying away from 
Paris to confirm to us by word of mouth. The bank 
of John Turner in the Rue Lafayette has failed, and 
with it goes all the fortune of Madame St. Pierre 
Lawrence.” 

Both his hearers exclaimed aloud, and Madame 
de Chantonnay showed signs of a desire to swoon ; 
but as no one took any notice, she changed her mind. 

“It is a ruse to gain time,” explained Albert, brush- 
ing the thin end of his moustache upward with a ges- 
373 


THE LAST HOPE 

ture of resolution. “Just as the other was a ruse 
to gain time. It is at present a race between two 
resolute parties. The party which is ready first and 
declares itself will he the victor. For to-day our poor 
France is in the gutter: she is in the hands of the 
canaille, and the canaille vfill accept the first who 
places himself upon an elevation and scatters gold. 
What care they — King or Emperor, Emperor or 
King! It is the same to them so long as they have 
a change of some sort and see, or think they see, gain 
to themselves to be snatched from it.” 

From which it will be seen that Albert de Chan- 
tonnay knew his owm countrymen. 

“But,” protested Madame de Chantonnay, who had 
a Frenchwoman’s inimitable quickness to grasp a 
situation — “but the government could scarcely cause 
a bank to fail — such an old-established bank as Tur- 
ner’s, which has existed since the day of Louis XIV. 
— in order to gain time.” 

“An unscrupulous Government can do anything in 
France,” replied the lady’s son. “Their existence 
depends upon delay, and they are aware of it. They 
would ruin France rather than forego their own ag- 
grandisement. And this is part of theif scheme. 
They seek to delay us at all costs. To kidnap 
de Bourbon was the first move. It failed. This is 
their second move. What must be our counter- 
move ?” 


374 


A SORDID MATTER 


He clasped his hands behind his willowy back and 
paced slowly backward and forward. By a gesture, 
Madame de Chantonnay bade the Marquis keep si- 
lence while she drew his attention to the attitude of 
her son. When he paused and fingered his whisker 
she gasped excitedly. 

“I have it,” said Albert, with an upward glance 
of inspiration. 

“Yes, my son?” 

“The Beauvoir estate,” replied Albert, “left to me 
by my uncle. It is worth three hundred thousand 
francs. That is enough for the moment. That must 
be our counter-move.” 

Madame de Chantonnay protested volubly. For if 
Frenchmen are ready to sacrifice, or at all events to 
risk, all for a sentiment — and history says nothing 
to the contrary — Frenchwomen are eminently prac- 
tical and far-sighted. 

Madame had a hundred reasons why the Beauvoir 
estate should not be sold. Many of them contradicted 
each other. She was not what may be called a close 
reasoner, but she was roughly effective. Many a gen- 
eral has won a victory not by the accuracy but by the 
volume of his fire. 

“What will become of France,” she cried to Alberti 
retreating back as he walked to and fro, “if none of 
the old families has a sou to bless itself with ? And 
Heaven knows that there are few enough remaining 
375 


THE LAST HOPE 

now. Besides, you will want to marry some day, 
and what will your bride say when you have no 
money? There are no ‘dots’ growing in the hedge- 
rows now. Not that I am a stickler for a ‘dot.’ Give 
me heart, I always say, and keep the money your- 
self. And some day you will find a loving heart, 
but no ‘dot.’ And there is a tragedy at once — ready 
made. Is it not so, my old friend ?” 

She turned to the Marquis de Gemosac for con- 
firmation of this forecast. 

“It is a danger, madame,” was the reply. “It is 
a danger which it would be well to foresee.” 

They had discussed a hundred times the possibility 
of a romantic marriage between their two houses. 
Juliette and Albert — the two last representatives of 
an old nobility long-famed in the annals of the west 
— might well fall in love with each other. It would 
be charming, Madame thought; but, alas! Albert 
would be wise to look for a “dot.” 

The Marquis paused. Again he temporised. Eor 
he could not all in an instant decide which side of 
this question to take. He looked at Albert, frail, 
romantic ; an ideal representative of that old nobility 
of France which was never practical, and elected to 
go to the guillotine rather than seek to cultivate that 
modern virtue. 

“At the same time, madame, it is well to remember 
that a loan offered now may reasonably be expected 
376 


A SORDID MATTER 

to bring such a return in the future as will provide 
‘dots’ for the de Chantonnays to the end of time.” 

Madame was about to make a spirited reply; she 
might even have suggested that the Beauvoir estate 
would be better apportioned to Albert’s wife than to 
Juliette as the wife of another, but Albert himself 
stopped in front of them and swept away all argu- 
ment by a passionate gesture of his small, white hand. 

“It is concluded,” he said. “I sell the Beauvoir 
estate. Have not the Chantonnays proved a hundred 
times that they are equal to any sacrifice for the sake 
of France?” 


377 


CHAPTER XXXV 

A SQUARE MAN 

All through the summer of 1851 — a year to be 
marked for all time in the minds of historians, not in 
red, but in black letters — the war of politics tossed 
France hither and thither. 

There were, at this time, five parties contending 
for mastery. Should one of these appear for the mo- 
ment to be about to make itself secure in power, the 
other four would at once unite to tear the common 
adversary from his unstable position. Of these par- 
ties, only two were of real cohesion : the Legitimists 
and the Bonapartists. The Socialists, the Moderate 
Republicans, and the Orleanists were too closely allied 
in the past to be friendly in the present. Socialists 
are noisy, but rarely clever. A man who in France 
describes himself as Moderate must not expect to be 
popular for any length of time. The Orleanists were 
only just out of office. It was scarcely a year since 
Louis Philippe had died in exile at Claremont — only 
three years since he signed his abdication and hurried 
378 


A SQUARE MAN 

across to Newhaven. It was not the turn of the Or- 
leanists. 

There is no quarrel so deadly as a family quarrel ; 
no fall so sudden as that of a house divided against 
itself. All through the spring and summer of 1851 
France exhibited herself in the eyes of the world, a 
laughing-stock to her enemies, a thing of pity to those 
who loved that great country. 

i The Republic of 1848 was already a house divided 
against itself. 

Its President, Louis Bonaparte, had been elected 
for four years. He was, as the law then stood, not 
eligible again until after the lapse of another four 
years. His party tried to abrogate this law, and 
failed. “No matter,” they said, “we shall elect 
him again, and President he shall he, despite the 
law.” 

This was only one of a hundred such clouds, no 
bigger than a man’s hand, arising at this time on the 
political horizon. For France was beginning to wan- 
der down that primrose path where a law is only a 
law so long as it is convenient. 

There was one man, Louis Bonaparte, who kept 
his head when others lost that invaluable adjunct; 
who pushed on doggedly to a set purpose ; whose task 
was hard even in France, and would have been im- 
possible in any other country. For it is only in France 
that ridicule does not kill. And twice within the last 
379 


THE LAST HOPE 


fifteen years — once at Strasbourg, once at Boulogne 
— he had made the world hold its sides at the mention 
of his name ; greeting with the laughter which is im- 
bittered by scorn, a failure damned by ridicule. 

It has been said that Louis Bonaparte never gave 
serious thought to the Legitimist party. He had in- 
herited, it would seem, that invaluable knowledge of 
men by which his uncle had risen to the greatest 
throne of modern times. He knew that a party is 
never for a moment equal to a man. And the Legiti- 
mists had no man. They had only the Comte de 
Chambord. 

At Frohsdorff they still clung to their hopes, with 
that old-world belief in the ultimate revival of a dead 
regime which was eminently characteristic. And at 
Frohsdorff there died, in the October of this year, the 
Duchess of Angouleme, Marie Therese Charlotte, 
daughter of Marie Antoinette, who had despised her 
two uncles, Louis XVIII. and Charles X., for the 
concessions they had made — who was more Royalist 
than the king. She was the last of her generation, the 
last of her family; and with her died a part of the 
greatness of France, almost all the dignity of royalty, 
and the last master-mind of the Bourbon race. 

If, as Albert de Chantonnay stated, the failure of 
Turner’s bank was nothing but a ruse to gain time, it 
had the desired effect. For a space, nothing could 
be undertaken, and the Marquis de Gemosac and his 
380 


A SQUARE MAN 

friends were hindered from continuing the work they 
had so successfully begun. 

All through the summer Loo Barebone remained 
in France, at Gemosac as much as anywhere. The 
Marquis de Gemosac himself went to Frohsdorff. 

“If she had been ten years younger,” he said, on 
his return, “I could have persuaded her to receive 
you. She has money. All the influence is hers. It 
is she who has had the last word in all our 
affairs since the death of the Due de Berri. But she 
is old — she is broken. I think she is dying, my 
friend.” 

It was the time of the vintage again. Barebone 
remembered the last vintage, and his journey through 
those provinces that supply all the world with wine, 
with Dormer Colville for a companion. Since then 
he had journeyed alone. He had made a hundred 
new friends, had been welcomed in a hundred historic 
houses. Wherever he had passed, he had left enthu- 
siasm behind him ; and he knew it. 

He had grown accustomed to his own power, and 
yet its renewed evidence was a surprise to him every 
day. There was something unreal in it. There is 
always something unreal in fame; and great men 
know in their own hearts that they are not great. It 
is only the world that thinks them so. When they 
are alone — in a room by themselves — they feel for 
a moment their own smallness. But the door opens, 
381 


THE LAST HOPE 

and in an instant they arise and play their part me- 
chanically. 

This had come to be Barebone’s daily task. It 
was so easy to make his way in this world, which 
threw its doors open to him, greeted him with out- 
stretched hands, and only asked him to charm them 
by being himself. He had not even to make an effort 
to appear to be that which he was not. He had only 
to be himself, and they were satisfied. 

Part of his role was Juliette de Gemosac. He 
found it quite easy to make love to her; and she, it 
seemed, desired nothing better. Nothing definite had 
been said by the Marquis de Gemosac. They were 
not formally affianced. They were not forbidden to 
see each other. But the irregularity of these proceed- 
ings lent a certain spice of surreptitiousness to their 
intercourse which was not without its charm. They 
did not see so much of each other after Loo had spoken 
to the Marquis de Gemosac on this subject; for Bare- 
bone had to make visits to other parts of France. 
Once or twice Juliette herself went to stay with rel- 
atives. During these absences they did not write to 
each other. 

It was, in fact, impossible for Barebone to keep up 
any correspondence whatever. He heard that Dor- 
mer Colville was still in Paris, seeking to snatch 
something from the wreck of Mrs. St. Pierre Law- 
rence’s fortune. The Marquis de Gemosac had been 
382 


A SQUARE MAN 

told that affairs might yet be arranged. He was no 
financier, however, he admitted; he did not under- 
stand such matters, and all that he knew was that the 
promised help from the Englishwoman was not forth- 
coming. 

“It is,” he concluded, “a question of looking else- 
where. It is not only that we want money. It is 
that we must have it at once.” 

It was not, strictly speaking, Loo’s part to think 
of or to administer the money. His was the part to 
be played by kings — so easy, if the gift is there; so 
impossible to acquire, if it he lacking — to know many 
people and to charm them all. 

Thus the summer ripened into autumn. It had 
been another great vintage in the south, and Bordeaux 
was more than usually busy when Barebone arrived 
there, at daybreak, one morning in November, having 
posted from Toulouse. He was more daring in win- 
ter, and went fearlessly through the streets. In cold 
weather it is so much easier for a man to conceal his 
identity ; for a woman to hide her beauty, if she wish 
to — which is a large If. Barebone could wear a fur 
collar and turn it up round that tell-tale chin, which 
made the passer-by pause and turn to look at him 
again if it was visible. 

He breakfasted at the old-fashioned inn in the heart 
of the town, where to this day the diligences deposit 
their passengers, and then he made his way to the 
383 


THE LAST HOPE 


quay, from whence he would take passage down the 
river. It was a cold morning, and there are few 
colder cities, south of Paris, than Bordeaux. Bare- 
bone hurried, his breath frozen on the fur of his 
collar. Suddenly he stopped; his new self — that 
phantom second-nature bred of custom — vanished in 
the twinkling of an eye, and left him plain Loo Bare- 
bone, of Earlingford, staring across the green water 
toward a The Last Hope,” deep-laden, anchored in 
mid-stream. 

Seeing him stop, a boatman ran toward him from 
a neighbouring flight of steps. 

“An English ship, monsieur,” he said ; “just come 
in. Her anchors are hardly home. Does monsieur 
wish to go on board ?” 

“Of course I do, comrade — as quick as you like,” 
he answered, with a gay laugh. It was odd that the 
sight of this structure, made of human hands, should 
change him in a flash of thought; should make his 
heart leap in his breast. 

In a few minutes he was seated in the wherry, half 
way out across the stream. Already a face was look- 
ing over the bulwarks. The hands were on the fore- 
castle, still busy clearing decks after the confusion 
of letting go anchor and hauling in the jib-boom. 

Barebone could see them leave off work and turn 
to look at him. One or two raised a hand in saluta- 
tion and then turned again to their task. Already 
384 


A SQUAEE MAN 

the mate — a Farlingford man, who had succeeded 
Loo — was standing on the rail fingering a coil of rope. 

“Old man is down below, ” he said, giving Bare- 
bone a hand. From the forecastle came sundry 
grunts, and half a dozen heads were jerked sideways 
at him. 

Captain Clubbe was in the cabin, where the re- 
mains of breakfast had been pushed to one end of 
the table to make room for pens and ink. The Cap- 
tain was laboriously filling in the countless documents 
required by the French custom-house. He looked up, 
pen in hand, and all the wrinkles, graven by years 
of hardship and trouble, were swept away like writ- 
ing from a slate. 

He laid aside his pen and held his hand out, across 
the table. 

“Had your breakfast?” he asked, curtly, with a 
glance at the empty coffee-pot. 

Loo laughed as he sat down. It was all so famil- 
iar ; the disorder of the cabin ; the smell of lamp-oil ; 
the low song of the wind through the rigging, that 
came humming in at the doorway, which was never 
closed, night or day, unless the seas were washing to 
and fro on the main deck. He knew everything so 
well; the very pen and the rarely used ink-pot; the 
Captain’s attitude, and the British care that he took 
not to speak with his lips that which was in his 
heart. 


385 


THE LAST HOPE 


“Well,” said Captain Clubbe, taking up his pen 
again, “how are you getting on ?” 

“With what ?” 

“With the business that brought you to this coun- 
try,” answered Clubbe, with a sudden gruffness; for 
he was, like the majority of big men, shy. 

Barebone looked at him across the table. 

“Do you know what the business is that brought 
me to this country ?” he asked. And Captain Clubbe 
looked thoughtfully at the point of his pen. 

“Did the Marquis de Gemosac and Dormer Col- 
ville tell you everything, or only a little ?” 

“I don’t suppose they told me everything,” was the 
reply. “Why should they ? I am only a seafaring 
man.” 

“But they told you enough,” persisted Barebone, 
“for you to draw your own conclusions as to my busi- 
ness over here.” 

“Yes,” answered Clubbe, with a glance across the 
table. “Is it going badly ?” 

“Ho. On the contrary, it is going splendidly,” 
answered Barebone, gaily ; and Captain Clubbe 
ducked his head down again over the papers of the 
Erench custom-house. “It is going splendidly, 
but ” 

He paused. Half an hour ago he had no thought 
in his mind of Captain Clubbe or of Farlingford. He 
had come on board merely to greet his old friends, 
386 


A SQUARE MAN 

to hear some news of home, to take up for a moment 
that old self of bygone days and drop it again. And 
now, in half a dozen questions and answers, whither 
was he drifting? Captain Clubbe filled in a word, 
slowly and very legibly. 

“But I am not the man, you know/’ said Barebone, 
slowly. It was as if the sight of that just man had 
bidden him cry out the truth. “I am not the man 
they think me. My father was not the son of Louis 
XVI., I know that now. I did not know it at first, 
but I know it now. And I have been going on with 
the thing, all the same.” 

Clubbe sat back in his chair. He was large and 
ponderous in body. And the habit of the body at 
length becomes the nature of the mind. 

“Who has been telling you that ?”- he asked. 

“Dormer Colville. He told me one thing first and 
then the other. Only he and you and I know of it.” 

“Then he must have told one lie,” said Clubbe, re- 
flectively. “One that we know of. And what he says 
is of no value either way ; for he doesn’t know. No 
one knows. Your father was a friend of mine, man 
and boy, and he didn’t know. He was not the same as 
other men ; I know that — but nothing more.” 

“Then, if you were me, you would give yourself 
the benefit of the doubt?” asked Barebone, with a 
rather reckless laugh. “For the sake of others — for 
the sake of France.” 


387 


THE LAST HOPE 


“Hot I,” replied Clubbe, bluntly. 

“But it is practically impossible to go back now,” 
explained Loo. “It would be the ruin of all my 
friends, the downfall of France. In my position, 
what would you do ?” 

“I don’t understand your position,” replied Clubbe. 
“I don’t understand politics; I am only a seafaring 
man. But there is only one thing to do — the square 
thing.” 

“But,” protested Dormer Colville’s pupil, “I can- 
not throw over my friends. I cannot abandon France 
now.” 

“The square thing,” repeated the sailor, stubbornly. 
“The square thing; and damn your friends — ‘damn 
France !” 

He rose as he spoke, for they had both heard the 
customs officers come on board; and these function- 
aries were now bowing at the cabin-door. 


CHAPTER XXXVI 


MBS. ST. PIERBE LAWRENCE DOES NOT UNDERSTAND 

It was early in November that the report took 
wing in Paris that John Turner’s hank was, after all, 
going to weather the storm. Dormer Colville was 
among the first to hear this news, and strangely 
enough he did not at once impart it to Mrs. St. Pierre 
Lawrence. 

All through the year, John Turner had kept his 
client supplied with ready money. He had, more- 
over, made no change in his own mode of living. 
Which things are a mystery to all who have no money 
of their own nor the good fortune to handle other 
people’s. There is no doubt some explanation of the 
fact that bankers and other financiers seem to fail, 
and even become bankrupt, without tangible effect 
upon their daily comfort, but the unfinancial cannot 
expect to understand it. 

There had, as a matter of fact, been no question 
of discomfort for Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence either. 

“Can I spend as much as I like?” she had asked 
Turner, and his reply had been in the affirmative. 

“No use in saving ?” 


389 


THE LAST HOPE 


“None whatever,” he replied. To which Mrs. St. 
Pierre Lawrence made answer that she did not under- 
stand things at all. 

“It is no use collecting straws against a flood,” the 
banker answered, sleepily. 

There was, of course, no question now of supplying 
the necessary funds to the Marquis de Gemosac and 
Albert de Chantonnay, who, it was understood, were 
raising the money, not without difficulty, elsewhere. 
Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence had indeed heard little or 
nothing of her Royalist friends in the west. Human 
nature is the same, it would appear, all the world 
over, but the upper crust is always the hardest. 

When Dormer Colville was informed of the ru- 
mour, he remembered that he had never quarrelled 
with John Turner. He had, of course, said some 
hard things in the heat of the moment, but John 
Turner had not retorted. There was no quarrel. 
Colville, therefore, took an early opportunity of lunch- 
ing at the club then reputed to have the best chef 
in Paris. He went late and found that the majority 
of members had finished dejeuner and were taking 
coffee in one or other of the smoking-rooms. 

After a quick and simple meal, Colville lighted a 
cigarette and went upstairs. There were two or three 
small rooms where members smoked or played cards 
or read the newspapers, and in the quietest of these 
John Turner was alone, asleep. Colville walked 
390 


MRS. LAWRENCE DON’T UNDERSTAND 


backward into the room, talking loudly as he did so 
with a friend in the passage. When well over the 
threshold he turned; John Turner, whose slumbers 
had been rudely disturbed, was sitting up rubbing 
his eyes. The surprise was of course mutual, and 
for a moment there was an awkward pause; then, 
with a smile of frank good-fellowship, Colville ad- 
vanced, holding out his hand. 

“I hope we have known each other too many years, 
old fellow,” he said, “to bear any lasting ill-will for 
words spoken in the heat of anger or disappoint- 
ment, eh ?” 

He stood in front of the banker frankly holding 
out the hand of forgiveness, his head a little on one 
side, that melancholy smile of toleration for poor 
human weakness in his eyes. 

“Well,” admitted Turner, “we’ve certainly known 
each other a good many years.” 

He somewhat laboriously hoisted himself up, his 
head emerging from his tumbled collar like the head 
of a tortoise aroused from sleep, and gave into Col- 
ville’s affectionate grasp a limp and nerveless hand. 

“No one could feel for you more sincerely than I 
do,” Colville assured him, drawing forward a chair, 
— “more than I have done all through these trying 
months.” 

“Very kind, I’m sure,” murmured Turner, looking 
drowsily at his friend’s necktie. One must look 
391 


THE LAST HOPE 


somewhere, and Turner always gazed at the necktie 
of anyone who sat straight in front of him, which 
usually induced an uneasy fingering of that ornament 
and an early consultation of the nearest mirror. 
“Have a cigar.” There was the faint suggestion of 
a twinkle beneath the banker’s heavy lids as Colville 
accepted this peace-offering. It was barely twenty- 
four hours since he had himself launched in Colville’s 
direction the rumour which had brought about this 
reconciliation. 

“And I’m sure,” continued the other, turning to 
cut the end of the cigar, “that no one would be better 
pleased to hear that better times are coming — eh? 
What did you say ?” 

“Nothing. Didn’t speak,” was the reply to this 
vague interrogation. Then they talked of other 
things. There was no lack of topics for conversa- 
tion at this time in France; indeed, the whole coun- 
try was in a buzz of talk. But Turner was not, it 
seemed, in a talkative mood. Only once did he rouse 
himself to take more than a passing interest in the 
subject touched upon by his easy-going companion. 

“Yes,” he admitted, “he may be the best cook in 
Paris, but he is not what he was. It is this Revision 
of the Constitution which is upsetting the whole 
country, especially the lower classes. The man’s hand 
is shaky. I can see it from his way of pouring the 
mayonnaise over a salad.” 

392 


MRS. LAWRENCE DON’T UNDERSTAND 


After touching upon each fresh topic, Colville 
seemed to return unconsciously to that which must 
of necessity be foremost in his companion’s thoughts 
— the possibility of saving Turner’s bank from fail- 
ure. And each time he learnt a little more. At last, 
with that sympathetic spontaneity which was his chief 
charm, Dormer Colville laid his hand confidentially 
on Turner’s sleeve. 

“Frankly, old fellow,” he said, “are you going to 
pull it through ?” 

“Frankly, old fellow, I am,” was the reply which 
made Colville glance hastily at the clock. 

“Gad !” he exclaimed, “look at the time. You have 
kept me gossiping the whole afternoon. Must be off. 
Nobody will be better pleased than I am to hear 
the good news. But of course I am mum. Not a 
word will they hear from me. I am glad. Good- 
bye.” 

“I dare say you are,” murmured Turner to the 
closed door. 

Dormer Colville was that which is known as an 
opportunist. It was a dull grey afternoon. He would 
be sure to find Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence at home. 
She had taken an apartment in the Rue de Lille in 
the St. Germain quarter. His way was past the 
flower-shop, where he sometimes bestowed a fickle 
custom. He went in and bought a carnation for his 
button-hole. 


393 


THE LAST HOPE 


It is to be presumed that John Turner devoted 
the afternoon to his affairs. It was at all events even- 
ing before he also bent his steps toward the Rue de 
Lille. 

“Yes,” the servant told him, Madame was at home 
and would assuredly see him. Madame was not alone. 
No. It was, however, only Monsieur Colville, who 
was so frequent a visitor. 

Turner followed the servant along the corridor. 
The stairs had rather tried one who had to elevate 
such a weight at each step; he breathed hard, but 
placidly. 

Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence received him with an 
unusual empressement. Dormer Colville, who was 
discovered sitting as far from her as the size of the 
room allowed, was less eager, but he brought forward 
a chair for the banker and glanced sharply at his face 
as he sat down. 

“So glad to see you,” the hostess explained. “It 
is really kind of you to come and cheer one up on 
such a dull afternoon. Dormer and I — won’t you 
take off your coat ? No, let me put it aside for you. 
Dormer and I were just — eh? — just saying how dull 
it was. Weren’t we ?” 

She looked from one to the other with a rather 
unnatural laugh. One would have thought that she 
was engaged in carrying off a difficult situation and, 
for so practised a woman of the world, not doing it 
394 


MRS. LAWRENCE DON’T UNDERSTAND 


very well. Her cheeks were flushed, which made her 
look younger, and a subtle uncertainty in her voice 
and manner added to this illusion charmingly. For 
a young girl’s most precious possession is her inex- 
perience. Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, for the first 
time in her life, was not sure of herself. 

“Now I hope you have not come on business,” she 
added, drawing forward her own chair and passing 
a quick hand over her hair. “Bother business ! Do 
not let us think about it.” 

“Not exactly,” replied Turner, recovering his 
breath. “Quite agree with you; let us say, bother 
business and not think of it. Though, for an old 
man who is getting stout, there is nothing much left 
but business and his dinner, eh?” 

“No. Do not say that,” cried the lady. “Never 
say that. It is time enough to think that years hence 
when we are all white-haired. But I used to think 
that myself once, you know. When I first had my 
money. Do you remember ? I was so pleased to have 
all that wealth that I determined to learn all about 
cheque-books and things and manage it myself. So 
you taught me, and at last you admitted that I was 
an excellent man of business. I know I thought I 
was myself. And I suppose I lapsed into a regular 
business woman and only thought of money and how 
to increase it. How horrid you must have thought 
me!” 


395 


THE LAST HOPE 

“Never did that,” protested Turner, stoutly. 

“But I know I learnt to think much too much about 
it,” Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence went on eagerly. “And 
now that it is all gone, I do not care that for it.” 

She snapped her finger and thumb and laughed 

gaily- 

“Not that,” she repeated. She turned and glanced 
at Dormer Colville, raising her eyebrows in some 
mute interrogation only comprehensible to him. 
“Shall I tell him ?” she asked, with a laugh of happi- 
ness not very far removed from tears, perhaps. Then 
she turned to the banker again. 

“Listen,” she said. “I am going to tell you some- 
thing which no one else in the world can tell you. 
Dormer and I are going to be married. I daresay 
lots of people will say that they have expected it for 
a long time. They can say what they like. We don’t 
care. And I am glad that you are the first person 
to hear it. We have only just settled it, so you are 
the very first to be told. And I am glad to tell you 
before anybody else because you have been so kind 
to me always. You have been my best friend, I 
think. And the kindest thing you ever did for me 
was to lose my money, for if you had not lost it, 
Dormer never would have asked me to marry him. 
He has just said so himself. And I suppose all men 
feel that. All the nice ones, I mean. It is one of the 
drawbacks of being rich, is it not ?” 

396 


MRS. LAWRENCE DON’T UNDERSTAND 

“I suppose it is,” answered Turner, stolidly, with- 
out turning an eyelash in the direction of Colville. 
“Perhaps that is why no one has ever asked me to 
marry them.” 

Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence laughed jerkily at this 
witticism. She laughed again when John Turner 
rose from his chair to congratulate her, but the laugh 
suddenly ceased when he raised her hand to his lips 
with a courtesy which was even in those days dying 
out of the world, and turned away from him hastily. 
She stood with her back toward them for a minute 
or two looking at some flowers on a side table. Then 
she came back into the middle of the room, all smiles, 
replacing her handkerchief in her pocket. 

“So that is the news I have to tell you,” she said, 
gravely. 

John Turner had placidly resumed his chair after 
shaking hands with Dormer Colville for the second 
time since luncheon. 

“Yes,” he answered, “it is news indeed. And I 
have a little news to give you. I do not say that it is 
quite free from the taint of business, but at all events 
it is news. Like yours, it has the merit of being at 
first hand, and you are the first to hear it. No one 
else could tell it to you.” 

He broke off and rubbed his chin while he looked 
apathetically at Colville’s necktie. 

“It has another merit, rare enough,” he went on. 

397 


THE LAST HOPE 


“It is good news. I think, in fact I may say I am 
sure, that we shall pull through now and your money 
will be safely returned to you.” 

“I am so glad,” said Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, 
with a glance at Dormer Colville. “I cannot tell 
you how glad I am.” 

She looked at the banker with bright eyes and the 
flush still in her cheeks that made her look younger 
and less sure of herself. 

“Not only for my own sake, you know. For yours, 
because I am sure you must be relieved, and for — 
well, for everybody’s sake. Tell me all about it, 
please.” And she pushed her chair sideways nearer 
to Colville’s. 

John Turner bit the first joint of his thumb re- 
flectively. It is so rare that one can tell anyone all 
about anything. 

“Tell me first,” Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence suggest- 
ed, “whether Miriam Liston’s money is all safe as 
well.” 

“Miriam’s money never was in danger,” he replied. 
“Miriam is my ward ; you are only my client. There 
is no chance of Miriam being able to make ducks 
and drakes of her money.” 

“That sounds as if I had been trying to do that 
with mine.” 

“Well,” admitted the banker, with a placid laugh, 

“if it had not been for my failure ” 

398 


MRS. LAWRENCE DON’T UNDERSTAND 


“Don’t call it hard names,” put in Dormer Col- 
ville, generously. “It was not a failure.” 

“Call it a temporary suspension of payment, then,” 
agreed the banker, imperturbably. “If it had not been 
for that, half your fortune would have been goodness 
knows where by now. You wanted to put it into 
some big speculation in this country, if I remember 
aright. And big speculations in France are the very 
devil just now. Whereas, now, you see, it is all safe 
and you can invest it in the beginning of next year 
in some good English securities. It seems provi- 
dential, does it not ?” 

He rose as he spoke and held out his hand to say 
good-bye. He asked the question of Colville’s neck- 
tie, apparently, for he smiled stupidly at it. 

“Well, I do not understand business after all, I 
admit that,” Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence called out 
gaily to him as he went toward the door. “I do not 
understand things at all.” 

“No, and I don’t suppose you ever will,” Turner 
replied as he followed the servant into the corridor. 


399 


CHAPTER XXXVII 


AN UNDERSTANDING 

Loo Barebone went back to the Chateau de Gem- 
osac after those travels in Provence which terminated 
so oddly on board “The Last Hope,” at anchor in 
the Garonne River. 

The Marquis received him with enthusiasm and a 
spirit of optimism which age could not dim. 

“Everything is going a merveille !” he cried. “In 
three months we shall be ready to strike our blow — 
to make our great coup for France. The failure of 
Turner's bank was a severe check, I admit, and for 
a moment I was in despair. But now we are sure 
that we shall have the money for Albert de Chan- 
tonnay’s Beauvoir estate by the middle of January. 
The death of Madame la Duchesse was a misfortune. 
If we could have persuaded her to receive you — your 
face would have done the rest, mon ami — we should 
have been invincible. But she was broken, that poor 
lady. Think of her life! Few women would have 
survived half of the troubles that she carried on those 
proud shoulders from childhood." 

400 


AN UNDERSTANDING 


They were sitting in the little salon in the building 
that adjoined the gate-house of Gemosac, of which 
the stone stairs must have rung beneath the red spurs 
of fighting men ; of which the walls were dented still 
with the mark of arms. 

Barebone had given an account of his journey, 
which had been carried through without difficulty. 
Everywhere success had waited upon him ; enthusiasm 
had marked his passage. In returning to France, he 
had stolen a march on his enemies, for nothing seemed 
to indicate that his presence in the country was known 
to them. 

“I tell you,” the Marquis explained, “that he has 
his hands full — that man in Paris. It is only a month 
since he changed his ministry. Who is this St. Ar- 
naud, his Minister of War ? Who is Maupas, his Pre- 
fect of Police? Does Monsieur Maupas know that 
we are nearly ready for our coup ? Bah ! Tell me 
nothing of that sort, gentlemen.” 

And this was the universally accepted opinion at 
this time, of Louis Bonaparte, the President of a tot- 
tering Republic, divided against itself; a dull man, 
at his wits’ end. For months, all Europe had been 
turning an inquiring and watchful eye on France. 
Socialism was rampant. Secret societies honey- 
combed the community. There was some danger in 
the air — men knew not what. Catastrophe was im- 
minent, and none knew where to look for its approach. 

401 


THE LAST HOPE 


But all thought that it must come at the end of the 
year. A sort of panic took hold of all classes. They 
dreaded the end of 1851. 

The Marquis de Gemosac spoke openly of these 
things before Juliette; she had been present when 
Loo and he talked together of this last journey, so 
happily accomplished, so fruitful of result. And Loo 
did not tell the Marquis that he had seen his old ship, 
“The Last Hope,” in the river at Bordeaux, and 
had gone on board of her. 

Juliette listened, as she worked, beneath the lamp 
at the table in the middle of the room. The lace-work 
she had brought from the convent-school was not fin- 
ished yet. It was exquisitely fine and delicate; and 
Juliette executed the most difficult patterns with a 
sort of careless ease. Sometimes, when the Marquis 
was more than usually extravagant in his anticipa- 
tions of success, or showed a superlative contempt for 
his foes, Juliette glanced at Barebone over her lace- 
work, but she rarely took part in the talk when poli- 
tics were under discussion. 

In domestic matters, however, this new chatelaine 
showed considerable shrewdness. She was not igno- 
rant of the price of hay, and knew to a cask how much 
wine was stored in the vault beneath the old chapel. 
On these subjects the Marquis good-humouredly fol- 
lowed her advice, sometimes. His word had always 
been law in the whole neighbourhood ; which, indeed, 
402 


AN UNDERSTANDING 

it should be. Was he not the head of one of the oldest 
families in France? 

“But, pardieu, she shows a wisdom quite phenom- 
enal, that little one,” the Marquis would tell his 
friends, with a hearty laugh. It was only natural 
that he should consider amusing the idea of uniting 
wisdom and youth and beauty in one person. It is 
still a universally accepted law that old people must 
be wise and young persons only charming. Some 
may think that they could point to a wise child born 
of foolish parents ; to a daughter who is well-educated 
and shrewd, possessing a sense of logic, and a mother 
who is ignorant and foolish; to a son who has more 
sense than his father: but of course such observers 
must be mistaken. Old theories must be the right 
ones. The Marquis had no doubt of this, at all events, 
and thought it most amusing that Juliette should es- 
tablish order in the chaos of domestic affairs at Gem- 
osac. 

“You are grave,” said Juliette to Barebone, one 
evening soon after his return, when they happened 
to be alone in the little drawing-room. Barebone was, 
in fact, not a lively companion ; for he had sat staring 
at the log-fire for quite three minutes when his eyes 
might assuredly have been better employed. “You 
are grave. Are you thinking of your sins ?” 

“When I think of those, mademoiselle, I laugh. 
It is when I think of you that I am grave.” 

403 


THE LAST HOPE 


“Thank you.” 

“So I am always grave, you understand.” 

She glanced quickly, not at him but toward him, 
and then continued her lace-making, with the ghost 
of a smile tilting the corners of her lips. 

“It is because I have something to tell you.” 

“A secret?” she inquired, and she continued to 
smile, but differently, and her eyes hardened almost 
to resentment. 

“Yes; a secret. It is a secret only known to two 
other people in the world besides myself. And they 
will never let you know even that they share it with 
you, mademoiselle.” 

“Then they are not women,” she said, with a sud- 
den laugh. “Tell it to me, then — your secret.” 

There had been an odd suggestion of foreknowl- 
edge in her manner; as if she were humouring him 
by pretending to accept as a secret of vast importance 
some news which she had long known — that little air 
of patronage which even schoolgirls bestow, at times, 
upon white-haired men. It is part of the maternal 
instinct. But this vanished when she heard that she 
was to share the secret with two men, and she re- 
peated, impatiently, “Tell me, please.” 

“It is a secret which will make a difference to us 
all our lives, mademoiselle,” he said, warningly. “It 
will not leave us the same as it found us. It has made 
a difference to all who know it. Therefore, I have 
404 


AN UNDERSTANDING 


only decided to tell you after long consideration. It 
is, in fact, a point of honour. It is necessary for you 
to know, whatever the result may he. Of that I have 
no doubt whatever.” 

He laughed reassuringly, which made her glance 
at him gravely, almost anxiously. 

“And are you going on telling it to other people 
afterward,” she inquired; “to my father, for in- 
stance ?” 

“No, mademoiselle. It comes to you, and it stops 
at you. I do not mind withholding it from your 
father, and from all the friends who have been so 
kind to me in France. I do not mind deceiving kings 
and emperors, mademoiselle, and even the People, 
which is now always spelt in capital letters, and must 
be spoken of with bated breath.” 

She gave a scornful little laugh, as at the sound 
of an old jest, the note of a deathless disdain, which 
was in the air she breathed. 

“Not even the newspapers, which are trying to gov- 
ern France. All that is a question of politics. But 
when it comes to you, mademoiselle, that is a different 
matter.” 

“Ah!” 

“Yes. It is then a question of love.” 

Juliette slowly changed colour, but she gave a little 
gay laugh of incredulity and bent her head away from 
the light of the lamp. 


405 


THE LAST HOPE 


“That is a different code of honour altogether/’ he 
said, gravely. “A code one does not wish to tamper 
with.” 

“Ho ?” she inquired, with the odd little smile of 
foreknowledge again. 

“Ho. And, therefore, before I go any farther, I 
think it best to tell you that I am not what I am pre- 
tending to he. I am pretending to be the son of the 
little Dauphin, who escaped from the Temple. He 
may have escaped from the Temple; that I don’t 
know. But I know, or at least I think I know, that 
he is not buried in Earlingford church-yard and he 
was not my father. I can pass as the grandson of 
Louis XVI. ; I know that. I can deceive all the world. 
I can even climb to the throne of France, perhaps. 
There are many, as you know, who think I shall do 
it without difficulty. But I do not propose to deceive 
you , mademoiselle.” 

There was a short silence, while Loo watched her 
face. Juliette had not even changed colour. When 
she was satisfied that he had nothing more to add, she 
looked at him, her needle poised in the air. 

“Do you think it matters?” she asked, in a little 
cool, even voice. 

It was so different from what he had expected that, 
for a moment, he was taken aback. Captain Clubbe’s 
bluff, uncompromising reception of the same news 
had haunted his thoughts. “The square thing,” that 
406 


AN UNDERSTANDING 


sailor had said, “and damn your friends; damn 
France.” Loo looked at Juliette in doubt; then, sud- 
denly, he understood her point of view ; he understood 
her. He had learnt to understand a number of peo- 
ple and a number of points of view during the last 
twelve months. 

“So long as I succeed ?” he suggested. 

“Yes,” she answered, simply. “So long as you 
succeed, I do not see that it can matter who you are.” 

“And if I succeed,” pursued Loo, gravely, “will 
you marry me, mademoiselle ?” 

“Oh ! I never said that,” in a voice that was ready 
to yield to a really good argument. 

“And if I fail — ” Barebone paused for an instant. 
He still doubted his own perception. “And if 
I fail, you would not marry me under any circum- 
stances ?” 

“I do not think my father would let me,” she an- 
swered, with her eyes cast down upon her lace-frame. 

Barebone laughed. He leant forward to put to- 
gether the logs, which burnt with a white incandes- 
cence that told of a frosty night. The Marquis had 
business in the town, and would soon return from the 
notary’s, in time to dress for dinner. 

“Well,” said Loo, over his shoulder, “it is as well 
to understand each other ; is it not ?” 

“Yes,” she answered, significantly. She ignored 
the implied sarcasm altogether. There was so much 
407 


THE LAST HOPE 


meaning in her reply that Loo turned to look at her. 
She was smiling as she worked. 

“Yes,” she went on ; “you have told me your secret 
— a secret. But I have the other, too ; the secret you 
have not told me, mon ami. I have had it always.” 
“Ah!” 

“The secret that you do not love me,” said J uliette, 
in her little wise, even voice; “that you have never 
loved me. Ah! You think we do not know. You 
think that I am too young. But we are never too 
young to know that; to know all about it. I think 
we know it in our cradles.” 

She spoke with a strange philosophy, far beyond 
her years. It might have been Madame de Chanton- 
nay who spoke, with all that lady’s vast experience 
of life and without any of her folly. 

“You think I am pretty. Perhaps I am. Just 
pretty enough to enable you to pretend, and you have 
pretended very well at times. You are good at pre- 
tending, one must conclude. Oh ! I bear no ill-will.” 

She broke off and looked at him, with a gay laugh, 
in which there was certainly no note of ill-will to be 
detected. 

“But it is as well,” she went on, “as you say, that 
we should understand each other. Thank you, for 
telling me your secret — the one you have told me. I 
am flattered at that mark of your confidence. A 
woman is always glad to be told a secret, and imme- 
408 


AN UNDERSTANDING 


diately begins to anticipate the pleasure she will take 
in telling it to others, in confidence.” 

She looked up for a moment from her work; for 
Loo had given a short laugh. She looked, to satisfy 
herself that it was not the ungenerous laugh that nine 
men out of ten would have cast at her ; and it was not. 
For Loo was looking at her with frank amuse- 
ment. 

“Oh, yes,” she said ; “I know that, too. It is one 
of the items not included in a convent education. It 
is unnecessary to teach us such things as that. We 
know them before we go in. Your secret is safe 
enough with me, however — the one you have told me. 
That is the least I can promise in return for your 
confidence. As to the other secret, bon Dieu ! we will 
pretend I do not know it, if you like. At all events, 
you can vow that you never told me, if — if ever you 
are called upon to do so.” 

She paused for a moment to finish off a thread. 
Then, when she reached out her hand for the reel, she 
glanced at him with a smile, not unkind. 

“So you need not pretend any more, monsieur,” 
she said, seeing that Barebone was wise enough to 
keep silence. “I do not know who you are, mon ami,” 
she went on, in a little hurst of confidence ; “and, as 
I told you just now, I do not care. And, as to that 
other matter, there is no ill-will. I only permit my- 
self to wonder, sometimes, if she is pretty. That is 
409 


THE LAST HOPE 

feminine, I suppose. One can be feminine quite 
young, you understand.” 

She looked at him with unfathomable eyes and a 
little smile, such as men never forget once they have 
seen it. 

“But you were inclined to be ironical just now, 
when I said I would marry you if you were success- 
ful. So I mention that other secret just to show that 
the understanding you wish to arrive at may be mu- 
tual — there may be two sides to it. I hear my father 
coming. That is his voice at the gate. We will leave 
things as they stand : n’est ce pas V 9 

She rose as she spoke and went toward the door. 
The Marquis’s voice was raised, and there seemed to 
be some unusual clamour at the gate. 


410 


CHAPTER XXXVIII 


A COUP-d’eTAT 

As the Marquis de Gemosac’s step was already on 
the stairs, Barebone was spared the necessity of agree- 
ing in words to the inevitable. 

A moment later the old man hurried into the room. 
He had not even waited to remove his coat and gloves. 
A few snow-flakes powdered his shoulders. 

“Ah !” he cried, on perceiving Barebone. “Good 
— you are safe ! ” He turned to speak to someone who 
was following him up the stairs with the slower steps 
of one who knew not his way. 

“All is well !” he cried. “He is here. Give your- 
self no anxiety.” 

And the second comer crossed the threshold, com- 
ing suddenly out of the shadow of the staircase. It 
was Dormer Colville, white with snow, his face grey 
and worn. He shook hands with Barebone and bowed 
to Juliette, but the Marquis gave him no time to 
speak. 

“I go down into the town,” he explained, breath- 
lessly. “The streets are full. There is a crowd on 

411 


THE LAST HOPE 


the market-place, more especially round the tobac- 
conist’s, where the newspapers are to be bought. Ho 
newspapers, if you please. The Paris journals of 
last Sunday, and this is Friday evening. Nothing 
since that. Ho Bordeaux journal. Ho news at all 
from Paris: absolute silence from Toulouse and Li- 
moges. ‘It is another revolution/ they tell each other. 
Something has happened and no one knows what. A 
man comes up to me and tugs at my sleeve. ‘Inside 
your walls, Monsieur le Marquis, waste no time/ he 
whispers, and is gone. He is some stable-boy. I 
have seen him somewhere. I ! inside my walls ! Here 
in Gemosac, where I see nothing but bare heads as 
I walk through the streets. Hame of God ! I should 
laugh at such a precaution. And while I am still 
trying to gather information the man comes back to 
me. ‘It is not the people you have to fear/ he whis- 
pers in my ear, ‘it is the Government. The order 
for your arrest is at the Gendarmerie, for it was I 
who took it there. Monsieur Albert was arrested 
yesterday, and is now in La Rochelle. Madame de 
Chantonnay’s house is guarded. It is from Madame 
I come.’ And again he goes. While I am hesitating, 
I hear the step of a horse, tired and yet urged to its 
utmost. It is Dormer Colville, this faithful friend, 
who is from Paris in thirty-six hours to warn us. He 
shall tell his story himself.” 

“There is not much to tell,” said Colville, in a hol- 

412 


A COUP-D’ETAT 

low voice. He looked round for a chair and sat down 
rather abruptly. “Louis Bonaparte is absolute master 
of France; that is all. He must be so by this time. 
When I escaped from Paris yesterday morning nearly 
all the streets were barricaded. But the troops were 
pouring into the city as I rode out — and artillery. 
I saw one barricade carried by artillery. Thousands 
must have been killed in the streets of Paris yester- 
day ” 

“ — And, bon Dieu ! it is called a coup-d’etat,” in- 
terrupted the Marquis. 

“That was on Tuesday,” explained Colville, in his 
tired voice — “at six o’clock on Tuesday morning. 
Yesterday and Wednesday were days of mas- 
sacre.” 

“But, my friend,” exclaimed the Marquis, impa- 
tiently, “tell us bow it happened. You laugh! It 
is no time to laugh.” 

“I do not know,” replied Colville, with an odd 
smile. “I think there is nothing else to be done — it 
is all so complete. We are all so utterly fooled by 
this man whom all the world took to be a dolt. On 
Tuesday morning he arrested seventy-eight of the 
Representatives. When Paris awoke, the streets had 
been placarded in the night with the decree of the 
President of the Republic. The National Assembly 
was dissolved. The Council of State was dissolved. 
Martial law was declared. And why ? He does not 
413 


THE LAST HOPE 


even trouble to give a reason. He has the army at 
his back. The soldiers cried ‘Vive l’Empereur’ as 
they charged the crowd on Wednesday. He has got 
rid of his opponents by putting them in prison. 
Many, it is said, are already on their way to exile 
in Cayenne ; the prisons are full. There is a warrant 
out against myself; against you, Barebone; against 
you, of course, Monsieur le Marquis. Albert de 
Chantonnay was arrested at Tours, and is now in La 
Rochelle. We may escape — we may get away to- 
night ■” 

He paused and looked hurriedly toward the door, 
for someone was coming up the stairs — someone who 
wore sabots. It was the servant, Marie, who came 
unceremoniously into the room with the exaggerated 
calm of one who realises the gravity of the situation 
and means to master it. 

“The town is on fire,” she explained, curtly ; “they 
have begun on the Gendarmerie. Doubtless they have 
heard that these gentlemen are to be arrested, and 
it is to give other employment to the gendarmes. But 
the cavalry has arrived from Saintes, and I come 
upstairs to ask monsieur to come down and help. It 
is my husband who is a fool. Holy Virgin ! how 
many times have I regretted having married such a 
blockhead as that. He says he cannot raise the draw- 
bridge. To raise it three feet would be to gain three 
hours. So I came to get monsieur/’ she pointed at 
414 


A COUP-D’ETAT 

Barebone with a steady finger, “who has his wits 
on the top always and two hands at the end of his 
arms.” 

“But it is little use to raise the drawbridge,” ob- 
jected the Marquis. “They will soon get a ladder 
and place it against the breach in the wall and climb 
in.” 

“Not if I am on the wall who amuse myself with 
a hay-fork, Monsieur le Marquis,” replied Marie, 
with that exaggerated respect which implies a knowl- 
edge of mental superiority. She beckoned curtly to 
Loo and clattered down the stairs, followed by Bare- 
bone. The others did not attempt to go to their as- 
sistance, and the Marquis de Gemosac had a hundred 
questions to ask Colville. 

The Englishman had little to tell of his own escape. 
There were so many more important arrests to be 
made that the overworked police of Monsieur de Mau- 
pas had only been able to apportion to him a bungler 
whom Colville had easily outwitted. 

“And Madame St. Pierre Lawrence?” inquired 
the Marquis. 

“Madame quitted Paris on Tuesday for England 
under the care of John Turner, who had business in 
London. He kindly offered to escort her across the 
Channel.” 

“Then she, at all events, is safe,” said the Marquis, 
with a little wave of the hand indicating his satis- 
415 


THE LAST HOPE 


faction. “He is not brilliant, Monsieur Turner — 
so few English are — but he is solid, I think.” 

“I think he is the cleverest man I know,” said 
Dormer Colville, thoughtfully. And before they had 
spoken again Loo Barebone returned. 

He, like Marie, had grasped at once the serious 
aspect of the situation, whereas the Marquis succeed- 
ed only in reaching it with a superficial touch. He 
prattled of the political crisis in Paris and bade his 
friends rest assured that law and order must ulti- 
mately prevail. He even seemed to cherish the com- 
forting assurance that Providence must in the end 
interfere on behalf of a Legitimate Succession. For 
this old noble was the true son of a father who had 
believed to the end in that King who talked grandilo- 
quently of the works of Seneca and Tacitus while 
driving from the Temple to his trial, with the mob 
hooting and yelling imprecations into the carriage 
windows. 

The Marquis de Gemosac found time to give a 
polite opinion on John Turner while the streets of 
Gemosac were being cleared by the cavalry from 
Saintes, and the Gendarmerie, burning briskly, light- 
ed up a scene of bloodshed. 

“We have raised the drawbridge a few feet,” said 
Barebone ; “but the chains are rusted and may easily 
be broken by a blacksmith. It will serve to delay 
them a few minutes ; but it is not the mob we seek 
416 


A COUP-D’ETAT 


to keep out, and any organised attempt to break in 
would succeed in half an hour. We must go, of 
course.” 

He turned to Colville, with whom he had met and 
faced difficulties in the past. Colville might easily 
have escaped to England with Mrs. St. Pierre Law- 
rence, but he had chosen the better part. He had 
undertaken a long journey through disturbed France 
only to throw in his lot at the end of it with two 
pre-condemned men. Loo turned to him as to one 
who had proved himself capable enough in an emer- 
gency, brave in face of danger. 

“We cannot stay here,” he said; “the gates will 
serve to give us an hour’s start, but no more. I sup- 
pose there is another way out of the chateau.” 

“There are two ways,” answered the Marquis. 
“One leads to a house in the town and the other 
emerges at the mill down below the walls. But, alas ! 
both are lost sight of. My ancestors ” 

“I know the shorter one,” put in Juliette, “the 
passage that leads to the mill. I can show you the 
entrance to that, which is in the crypt of the chapel, 
hidden behind the casks of wine.” 

She spoke to Barebone, only half-concealing, as 
Marie had done, the fact that the great respect with 
which the Marquis de Gemosac was treated was arti- 
ficial, and would fall to pieces under the strain of an 
emergency — a faint echo of the old regime. 

417 


THE LAST HOPE 


“When you are gone,” the girl continued, still ad- 
dressing Barebone, “Marie and I can keep them out 
at least an hour — probably more. We may be able 
to keep them outside the walls all night; and when 
at last they come in it will take them hours to sat- 
isfy themselves that you are not concealed within 
the enceinte.” 

She was quite cool, and even smiled at him with a 
white face. 

“You are always right, mademoiselle, and have a 
clear head,” said Barebone. 

“But no heart ?” she answered in an undertone, 
under cover of her father’s endless talk to Colville 
and with a glance which Barebone could not under- 
stand. 

In a few minutes Dormer Colville pronounced 
himself ready to go, and refused to waste further 
precious minutes in response to Monsieur de Gemo- 
sac’s offers of hospitality. No dinner had been pre- 
pared, for Marie had sterner business in hand and 
could be heard beneath the windows urging her hus- 
band to display a courage superior to that of a rabbit. 
Juliette hurried to the kitchen and there prepared a 
parcel of cold meat and bread for the fugitives to eat 
as they fled. 

“We might remain hidden in a remote cottage,” 
Barebone had suggested to Colville, “awaiting the 
development of events, but our best chance is ‘The 
418 


A COUP-D’ETAT 

Last Hope/ She is at Bordeaux, and must be nearly 
ready for sea.” 

So it was hurriedly arranged that they should make 
their way on foot to a cottage on the marsh while 
Jean was despatched to Bordeaux with a letter for 
Captain Clubhe. 

“It is a pity,” said Marie, when informed of this 
plan, “that it is not I who wear the breeches. But I 
will make it clear to Jean that if he fails to carry 
out his task he need not show his face at the gate 
again.” 

The Marquis ran hither and thither, making a hun- 
dred suggestions, which were accepted in the soothing 
manner adopted toward children. He assured Juli- 
ette that their absence would be of short duration; 
that there was indeed no danger, but that he was ac- 
ceding to the urgent persuasions of Barebone and 
Colville, who were perhaps unnecessarily alarmed — 
who did not understand how affairs were conducted 
in France. He felt assured that law and order must 
prevail. 

“But if they have put Albert de Chantonnay in 
prison, why should you be safe?” asked Juliette. To 
which the Marquis replied with a meaning cackle 
that she had a kind heart, and that it was only natural 
that it should be occupied at that moment with 
thoughts of that excellent young man who, in his turn, 
was doubtless thinking of her in his cell at La Ro- 
chelle. 


419 


THE LAST HOPE 


Which playful allusion to Albert de Chantonnay’s 
pretensions was received by their object with a calm 
indifference. 

“When J ean returns,” she said, practically, “I will 
send him to you at the Bremonts’ cottage with food 
and clothing. But you must not attempt to commu- 
nicate with us. You would only betray your where- 
abouts and do no good to us. We shall be quite safe 
in the chateau. Marie and I and Madame Maugiron 
are not afraid.” 

At which the Marquis laughed heartily. It was 
so amusing to think that one should be young and 
pretty — and not afraid. In the meantime Barebone 
was sealing his letter to Captain Clubbe. He had 
written it in the Suffolk dialect, spelling all the words 
as they are pronounced on that coast and employing 
when he could the Danish and Dutch expressions in 
daily use on the foreshore, which no French official 
seeking to translate could find in any dictionary. 

Loo gave his instructions to Jean himself, who re- 
ceived them in a silence not devoid of intelligence. 
The man had been round the walls and reported that 
nothing stirred beneath them; that there was more 
than one fire in the town, and that the streets ap- 
peared to be given over to disorder and riot. 

“It is assuredly a change in the Government,” he 
explained, simply. “And there will be many for 
Monsieur l’Abbe to bury on Sunday.” 

420 


A COUP-D’ETAT 

J ean was to accompany them to the cottage of an 
old man who had once lived by ferrying the rare pas- 
senger across the Gironde. Having left them here, 
he could reach Blaye before daylight, from whence 
a passage up the river to Bordeaux would be easily 
procurable. 

The boatman’s cottage stood on the bank of a creek 
running into the Gironde. It was a lone building 
hidden among the low dunes that lie between the 
river and the marsh. Anyone approaching it by day- 
light would be discernible half an hour in advance, 
and the man’s boat, though old, was seaworthy. 
None would care to cross the lowlands at night except 
under the guidance of one or two who, like Jean, knew 
their way even in the dark. 

Colville and Barebone had to help Jean to move 
the great casks stored in the crypt of the old chapel 
by which the entrance to the passage was masked. 

“It is, I recollect having been told, more than a 
passage — it is a ramp,” explained the Marquis, who 
stood by. “It was intended for the passage of horses, 
so that a man might mount here and ride out into 
the mill-stream, actually beneath the mill-wheel which 
conceals the exit.” 

Juliette, a cloak thrown over her evening dress, 
had accompanied them and stood near, holding a lan- 
tern above her head to give them light. It was an 
odd scene — a strange occupation for the last of the 
421 


THE LAST HOPE 


de Gemosacs. Through the gaps in the toppling walls 
they could hear the roar of voices and the occasional 
report of a firearm in the streets of the town below. 
The door opened easily enough, and Jean, lighting 
a candle, led the way. Barebone was the last to fol- 
low. Within the doorway he turned to say good-bye. 
The light of the lantern flickered uncertainly on 
Juliette’s fair hair. 

“We may be back sooner than you expect, made- 
moiselle,” said Barebone. 

“Or you may go — to England,” she answered. 


422 


CHAPTER XXXIX 


“JOHN DARBY” 

Although it was snowing hard, it was not a dark 
night. There was a half moon hidden behind those 
thin, fleecy clouds, which carry the snow across the 
Hortli Sea and cast it noiselessly upon the low-lying 
coast, from Thanet to the Wash, which knows less 
rain and more snow than any in England. 

A gale of wind was blowing from the north-east; 
not in itself a wild gale, but at short intervals a fresh 
burst of wind brought with it a thicker fall of snow, 
and during these squalls the force of the storm was 
terrific. A man, who had waited on the far shore of 
the river for a quiet interval, had at last made his 
way to the Farlingford side. He moored his boat and 
stumbled heavily up the steps. 

There was no one on the quay. The street was 
deserted, but the lights within the cottages glowed 
warmly through red blinds here and there. The ma- 
jority of windows were, however, secured with a shut- 
ter, screwed tight from within. The man trotted 
steadily up the street. He had an unmistakable air 
of discipline. It was only six o’clock, but night had 
423 


THE LAST HOPE 

closed in three hours ago. The coast-guard looked 
neither to one side nor the other, but ran on at the 
pace of one who had run far and knows that he can- 
not afford to lose his breath ; for his night’s work was 
only begun. 

The coast-guard station stands on the left-hand side 
of the street, a long, low house in a bare garden. In 
answer to the loud summons, a red-faced little man 
opened the door and let out into the night a smell of 
bloaters and tea ; the smell that pervades all F arling- 
ford at six o’clock in the evening. 

“Something on the Inner Curio Bank,” shouted the 
coast-guard in his face ; and, turning on his heel, he 
ran with the same slow, organised haste, leaving the 
red-faced man finishing a mouthful on the mat. 

The next place of call was at Biver Andrew’s, the 
little low cottage with rounded corners, below the 
church. 

“Come out o’ that,” said the coast-guard, with a 
contemptuous glance of snow-rimmed eyes at River 
Andrew’s comfortable tea-table. “Ring yer bell. 
Something on the Inner Curio Bank.” 

River Andrew had never hurried in his life ; and, 
like all his fellows, he looked upon coast-guards as 
amateurs; mindful, as all amateurs are, of their 
clothes. 

“A’m now going,” he answered, rising laboriously 
from his chair. The coast-guard glanced at his feet, 
424 


‘JOHN DARBY” 


clad in the bright green carpet-slippers, dear to sea- 
faring men. Then he turned to the side of the mantel- 
piece and took the church keys from the nail. For 
everybody knows where everybody else keeps his keys 
in Farlingford. He forgot to shut the door behind 
him, and River Andrew, pessimistically getting into 
his sea-boots, swore at his retreating back. 

“Likely as not, he’ll getten howld o’ the wrong 
roup,” he muttered ; though he knew that every boy 
in the village could point out the rope of “John 
Darby,” as that which had a piece of faded scarlet 
flannel twisted through the strands. 

In a few minutes the man, who hastened slowly, 
gave the call, which every man in Farlingford an- 
swered with an emotionless, mechanical promptitude. 
From each fireside some tired worker reached out his 
hand toward his most precious possession, his sea- 
boots, as his forefathers had done before him for two 
hundred years at the sound of “John Darby.” The 
women crammed into the pockets of the men’s stiff 
oilskins a piece of bread, a half-filled bottle — knowing 
that, as often as not, their husbands must pass the 
night and half the next day on the beach, or out at sea, 
should the weather permit a launch through the surf. 

There was no need of excitement, or even of com- 
ment. Did not “John Darby” call them from their 
firesides or their beds a dozen times every winter, to 
scramble out across the shingle? As often as not, 
425 


THE LAST HOPE 


there ivas nothing to be done but drag the dead bodies 
from the surf ; but sometimes the dead revived — some 
fair-haired, mystic foreigner from the northern seas, 
who came to and said, “T’ank you,” and nothing else. 
And next day, rigged out in dry clothes and de- 
spatched toward Ipswich on the carrier’s cart, he 
would shake hands awkwardly with any standing near 
and bob his head and say “T’ank you” again, and go 
away, monosyllabic, mystic, never to be heard of 
more. But the ocean, as it is called at Farlingford, 
seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of such Ti- 
tans to throw up on the rattling shingle winter after 
winter. And, after all, they were seafaring men, and 
therefore brothers. Farlingford turned out to a man, 
each seeking to be first across the river every time 
“ J ohn Darby” called them, as if he had never called 
them before. 

To-night none paused to finish the meal, and many 
a cup raised half-way was set dow T n again untasted. 
It is so easy to be too late. 

Already the flicker of lanterns on the sea-wall 
showed that the rectory was astir. For Septimus 
Marvin, vaguely recalling some schoolboy instinct of 
fair-play, knew the place of the gentleman and the 
man of education among humbler men in moments 
of danger and hardship, which should, assuredly, 
never be at the back. 

“Yonder’s parson,” someone muttered. “His head 

426 


“JOHX DARBY” 

is clear enow, I’ll warrant, when he hears ‘John 
Darby.’ ” 

“’Tis only on Sundays, when ‘John’ rings slow, ’tis 
misty,” answered a sharp-voiced woman, with a 
laugh. For half of Farlingford was already at the 
quay, and three or four boats were bumping and 
splashing against the steps. The tide was racing out, 
and the wind, whizzing slantwise across it, pushed it 
against the wooden piles of the quay, making them 
throb and tremble. 

“Yot less’n four to the oars !” shouted a gruff voice, 
at the foot of the steps, where the salt water, splash- 
ing on the snow, had laid bare the green and slimy 
moss. Two or three volunteers stumbled down the 
steps, and the first boat got away, swinging down- 
stream at once, only to be brought slowly back, head 
to wind. She hung motionless a few yards from the 
quay, each dip of the oars stirring the water into a 
whirl of phosphorescence, and then forged slowly 
ahead. 

Septimus Marvin was not alone, but was accom- 
panied by a bulky man, not unknown in Farlingford 
— John Turner, of Ipswich, understood to live “for- 
eign,” but to return, after the manner of East An- 
glians, when occasion offered. The rector was in oil- 
skins and sou’wester, like anyone else, and the gleam 
of his spectacles under the snowy brim of his head- 
gear seemed to strike no one as incongruous. His 
427 


THE LAST HOPE 


pockets bulged with bottles and bandages. Under his 
arm he carried a couple of blanket horse-cloths, useful 
for carrying the injured or the dead. 

“The Curio — the Inner Curio — yes, yes !” he 
shouted in response to information volunteered on all 
sides. “Poor fellows ! The Inner Curio, dear, dear !” 

And he groped his way down the steps, into the 
first boat he saw, with a simple haste. John Turner 
followed him. He had tied a silk handkerchief over 
his soft felt hat and under his chin. 

“No, no !” he said, as Septimus Marvin made room 
for him on the after-thwart. “I’m too heavy for a 
passenger. Put my weight on an oar,” and he clam- 
bered forward to a vacant thwart. 

“Mind you come back for us, River Andrew !” cried 
little Sep’s thin voice, as the boat swirled down 
stream. His wavering bull’s-eye lantern followed it, 
and showed River Andrew and another pulling stroke 
to John Turner’s bow, for the banker had been a 
famous oar on the Irwell in his boyhood. Then, with 
a smack like a box on the ear, another snow-squall 
swept in from the sea, and forced all on the quay to 
turn their backs and crouch. Many went back to their 
homes, knowing that nothing could be known for some 
hours. Others crouched on the landward side of an 
old coal-shed, peeping round the corner. 

Miriam and Sep, and a few others, waited on the 
quay until River Andrew or another should return. 
428 


'■JOHN DARBY” 


It was an understood thing that the helpers, such as 
could man a boat or carry a drowned man, should go 
first. In a few minutes the squall was past, and by 
the light of the moon, now thinly covered by clouds, 
the black forms of the first to reach the other shore 
could be seen straggling across the marsh toward the 
great shingle-bank that lies between the river and the 
sea. Two boats were moored at the far side, another 
was just making the jetty, while a fourth was return- 
ing toward the quay. It was River Andrew, faithful 
to his own element, who preferred to be first here, 
rather than obey orders on the open beach. 

There were several ready to lend a helping hand 
against tide and wind; and Miriam and Sep were 
soon struggling across the shingle, in the footsteps of 
those who had gone before. The north-east wind 
seared their faces like a hot iron, but the snow had 
ceased falling. As they reached the summit of the 
shingle-bank, they could see in front of them the black 
line of the sea, and on the beach, where the white of 
the snow and the white of the roaring surf merged 
together, a group of men. 

One or two stragglers had left this group to search 
the beach, north or south ; but it was known, from a 
long and grim experience, that anything floating in 
from the tail of the Inner Curio Bank must reach the 
shore at one particular point. A few lanterns twin- 
kled here and there, but near the group of watchers 
429 


THE LAST HOPE 


a bonfire of wreckage and tarry fragments and old 
rope, brought hither for the purpose, had been kin- 
dled. 

Two boats, hauled out of reach of a spring tide, 
were being leisurely prepared for launching. There 
was no hurry ; for it had been decided, by the older 
men, that no boat could be put to sea through the surf 
then rolling in. At the turn of the tide, in two hours’ 
time, something might be done. 

“Us cannot see anything,” a bystander said to Mir- 
iam. “It is just there, where I am pointing. See; 
Andrew saw something a while back — says it looked 
like a schooner.” 

The man stood pointing out to sea to the southward. 
He carried an unlighted torch — a flare, roughly made, 
of tarred rope, bound round a stick. At times, one 
or another would ignite his flare, and go down the 
beach holding it above his head, while he stood, knee 
deep, in the churning foam to peer out to sea. He 
would presently return, without comment, to beat out 
his flare against his foot and take his place among 
the silent watchers. No one spoke ; but if any turned 
his head sharply to one side or other, all the rest 
wheeled, like One man, in the same direction, and, 
after staring at the tumbled sea, would turn reproach- 
ful glances on the false alarmist. 

Suddenly, after a long wait, four men rushed, with- 
out a word, into the surf ; their silent fury suggesting, 
430 


‘JOHH DARBY” 


oddly, the rush of hounds upon a fox. They had 
simultaneously caught sight of something dark, half 
sunk in the shallow water. In a moment they were 
struggling up the shingle slope toward the fire, carry- 
ing a heavy weight. They laid their burden by the 
fire, where the snow had melted away ; and it was a 
man. He was in oilskins, and someone cut the tape 
that tied his sou’wester. His face was covered with 
blood. 

“’Tis warm,” said the man who had cut away the 
oilskin cap, and with his hand he wiped the blood 
away from the eyes and mouth. Someone in the back- 
ground drew a cork, with his teeth, and a bottle was 
handed down to those kneeling on the ground. 

Suddenly the man sat up — and coughed. 

“Shipmets,” he said, with a splutter, and lay down 
again. 

Someone held the bottle to his lips and wiped the 
blood away from his face again. 

“My God!” shouted a bystander, gruffly. “’Tis 
William Brooke, of the Cottages.” 

“Yes. ’Tis me,” said the man, sitting up again. 
“Hot that arm, mate; don’t ye touch it. ’Tis bruk. 
Yes; ’tis me. And ‘The Last Hope’ is on the tail 
of the Inner Curio — and the spar that knocked me 
overboard fell on the old man, and must have half 
killed him. But Loo Barebone’s aboard.” 

He rose to his knees, with one arm hanging straight 
431 


THE LAST HOPE 


and piteous from his shoulder, then slowly to his feet. 
He stood wavering for a moment, and wiped his 
mouth with the back of his hand and spluttered. 
Then, looking straight in front of him, with that 
strange air of a whipped dog, which humble men wear 
when the hand of Heaven is upon them, he staggered 
up the beach toward the river and Earlingford. 

“Where are ye goin’ ?” someone asked. 

“Over to mine,” was the reply. “A’m going to my 
old woman, shipmets.” 

And he staggered away in the darkness. 


432 


CHAPTER XL 


FARLINGFORD ONCE MORE 

After a hurried consultation, Septimus Marvin 
was deputed to follow the injured man and take him 
home, seeing that he had as yet but half recovered 
his senses. This good Samaritan had scarcely dis- 
appeared when a shout from the beach drew the at- 
tention of all in another direction. 

One of the outposts was running toward the fire, 
waving his lantern and shouting incoherently. It 
was a coast-guard. 

“Cornin’ ashore in their own boat,” he cried. 
“They’re coming in in their own boat !” 

“There she rides — there she rides!” added Sea 
Andrew, almost immediately, and he pointed to the 
south. 

Quite close in, just outside the line of breakers, 
a black shadow was rising and falling on the water. 
It seemed to make scarcely any way at all, and each 
sea that curled underneath the boat and roared 
toward the beach was a new danger. 

“They’re going to run her in here,” said Sea An- 

433 


THE LAST HOPE 


drew. “There’s more left on board ; that’s what that 
means, and they’re goin’ back for ’em. If ’twasn’t 
so they’d run in anywheres and let her break.” 

For one sailor will always tell what another is 
about, however great the distance intervening. 

Slowly the boat came on, rolling tremendously on 
the curve of the breakers, between the broken water 
of the tideway and the spume of the surf. 

“That’s Loo at the helium,” said Sea Andrew, the 
keenest eyes in Farlingford. 

And suddenly Miriam swayed sideways against 
John Turner, who was perhaps watching her, for he 
gripped her arm and stood firm. Ho one spoke. The 
watchers on the beach stared open-mouthed, making 
unconscious grimaces as the boat rose and fell. All 
had been ready for some minutes ; every preparation 
made according to the time-honoured use of these 
coasts : four men with life-lines round them standing 
knee-deep waiting to dash in deeper, others behind 
them grouped in two files, some holding the slack of 
the life-lines, forming a double rank from the shore 
to the fire, giving the steersman his course. There 
was no need to wave a torch or shout an order. They 
were Farlingford men on the shore and Farlingford 
men in the boat. 

At last, after breathless moments of suspense, the 
boat turned, and came spinning in on the top of a 
breaker, with the useless oars sticking out like the 
434 


FARLINGFORD ONCE MORE 


legs of some huge insect. For a few seconds it 
was impossible to distinguish anything. The mo- 
ment the boat touched ground, the waves beating on 
it enveloped all near it in a whirl of spray, and the 
black forms seemed to be tumbling over each other 
in confusion. 

“You see,” said Turner to Miriam, “he has come 
back to you after all.” 

She did not answer but stood, her two hands clasped 
together on her breast, seeking to disentangle the 
confused group half in half out of the water. 

Then they heard Loo Barebone’s voice, cheerful 
and energetic, almost laughing. Before they could 
understand what was taking place his voice was audi- 
ble again, giving a sharp, clear order, and all the 
black forms rushed together down into the surf. A 
moment later the boat danced out over the crest of 
a breaker, splashing into the next and throwing up 
a fan of spray. 

“She’s through, she’s through !” cried someone. 
And the boat rode for a brief minute head to wind 
before she turned southward. There were only three 
on the thwarts — Loo Barebone and two others. 

The group now broke up and straggled up toward 
the fire. One man was being supported, and could 
scarcely walk. It was Captain Clubbe, hatless, his 
grey hair plastered across his head by salt water. 

He did not heed anyone, but sat down heavily on 

435 


THE LAST HOPE 


the shingle and felt his leg with one hand, the other 
arm hung limply. 

“Leave me here,” he said, gruffly, to two or three 
who were spreading out a horse-cloth and pre- 
paring to carry him. “Here I stay till all are 
ashore.” 

Behind him were several new-comers, one of them 
a little man talking excitedly to his companion. 

“But it is a folly,” he was saying in French, “to 
go back in such a sea as that.” 

It was the Marquis de Gemosac, and no one was 
taking any notice of him. Dormer Colville, stum- 
bling over the shingle beside him, recognised Miriam 
in the firelight and turned again to look at her com- 
panion as if scarcely believing the evidence of his 
own eyes. 

“Is that you, Turner?” he said. “We are all here, 
— the Marquis, Barebone, and I. Clubbe took us on 
board one dark night in the Gironde and brought us 
home.” 

“Are you hurt ?” asked Turner, curtly. 

“Oh, no. But Clubbe’s collar-bone is broken and 
his leg is crushed. We had to leave four on board; 
not room for them in the boat. That fool Barebone 
has gone back for them. He promised them he would. 
The sea out there is awful !” 

He knelt down and held his shaking hands to the 
flames. Someone handed him a bottle, but he turned 
436 


FARLINGFORD ONCE MORE 

first and gave it the Marquis de Gemosac, who was 
shaking all over like one far gone in a palsy. 

Sea Andrew and the coast-guard captain were per- 
suading Captain Clubbe to quit the beach, but he 
only answered them roughly in monosyllables. 

“My place is here till all are safe,” he said. “Let 
me lie.” 

And with a groan of pain he lay back on the beach. 
Miriam folded a blanket and placed it under his head. 
He looked round, recognised her, and nodded. 

“No place for you, miss,” he said, and closed his 
eyes. After a moment he raised himself on his elbow 
and looked round the faces peering down at him. 

“Loo will beach her anywhere he can. Keep a 
bright lookout for him,” he said. Then he was silent, 
and all turned their faces toward the sea. 

Another snow-squall swept in with a rush from the 
eastward, and half of the fire was blown away — a 
trail of sparks hissing on the snow. They built up 
the fire again and waited, crouching low over the 
embers. They could see nothing out to sea. There 
was nothing to be done but to wait. Some had gone 
along the shore to the south, keeping pace with the 
supposed progress of the boat, ready to help should 
she be thrown ashore. 

Suddenly the Marquis de Gemosac, shivering over 
the fire, raised his voice querulously. His emotions 
always found vent in speech. 

437 


THE LAST HOPE 


“It is a folly, ” he repeated, “that he has com- 
mitted. I do not understand, gentlemen, how he was 
permitted to do such a thing — he whose life is of 
value to millions.” 

He turned his head to glance sharply at Captain 
Clubbe, at Colville, at Turner, who listened with 
that half-contemptuous silence which Englishmen 
oppose to unnecessary or inopportune speech. 

“Ah !” he said, contemptuously, “you do not un- 
derstand — you Englishmen — or you do not believe, 
perhaps, that he is the King. You would demand 
proofs which you know cannot be produced. I de- 
mand no proofs, for I know. I know without any 
proof at all but his face, his manner, his whole being. 
I knew at once when I saw him step out of his boat 
here in this sad village, and I have lived with him 
almost daily ever since — only to be more sure than 
at first:'’ 

His hearers made no answer. They listened toler- 
antly enough, as one listens to a child or to any other 
incapablejof keeping to the business in hand. 

“Ofy I know more than you suspect,” said the Mar- 
quis, suddenly. “There are some even in our own 
party who have doubts, who are not quite sure. I 
know that there was a doubt as to that portrait of the 
Queen,” he half glanced toward Dormer Colville. 
“Some say one thing, some another. I have been 
told that, when the child — Monsieur de Bourbon’s 
438 


FARLINGFORD ONCE MORE 


father — landed here, there were two portraits among 
their few possessions — the miniature and a larger 
print, an engraving. Where is that engraving, one 
would ask?” 

“I have it in my safe in Paris,” said a thick voice 
in the darkness. “Thought it was better in my pos- 
session than anywhere else.” 

“Indeed ! And now, Monsieur Turner — ” the 
Marquis raised himself on his knees and pointed in 
his eager way a thin finger in the direction of the 
banker — “tell me this. Those portraits to which 
some would attach importance. They are of the 
Duchesse de Guiche. Admitted ? Good ! If you 
yourself — who have the reputation of being a man 
of wit — desired to secure the escape of a child and 
his nurse, would you content yourself with the mere 
precaution of concealing the child’s identity ? Would 
you not go farther and provide the nurse with a sub- 
terfuge, a blind something for the woman to produce 
and say, ‘This is not the little Dauphin. This is so- 
and-so. See, here is the portrait of his mother’ ? 
What so effective, I ask you ? What so likely to he 
believed as a scandal directed against the hated aris- 
tocrats ? Can you advance anything against that 
theory?” 

“No, monsieur,” replied Turner. 

“But Monsieur de Bourbon knows of these doubts,” 
went on the Marquis. “They have even touched his 
439 


THE LAST HOPE 


own mind, I know that. But he has continued to 
fight undaunted. He has made sacrifices — any look- 
ing at his face can see that. It was not in France 
that he looked for happiness, but elsewhere. He was 
not heart-whole — I who have seen him with the most 
beautiful women in F ranee paying court to him know 
that. But this sacrifice, also, he made for the sake 
of France. Or perhaps some woman of w 7 hom we 
know nothing stepped back and bade him go forward 
alone, for the sake of his own greatness — who can 
tell?” 

Again no one answered him. He had not perceived 
Miriam, and John Turner, with that light step which 
sometimes goes with a vast bulk, had placed himself 
between her and the firelight. Monsieur de Gemosac 
rose to his feet and stood looking seaward. The snow- 
clouds were rolling away to the west, and the moon, 
breaking through, was beginning to illumine the wild 
sky. 

“Gentlemen,” said the Marquis, “they have been 
gone a long time ?” 

Captain Clubbe moved restlessly, but he made no 
answer. The Marquis had, of course, spoken in 
French, and the Captain had no use for that language. 

The group round the fire had dwindled until only 
half a dozen remained. One after another the watch- 
ers had moved away uneasily toward the beach. The 
Marquis was right — the boat had been gone too long. 

440 


FARLINGFORD ONCE MORE 

At last the moon broke through, and the snowy 
scene was almost as light as day. 

John Turner was looking along the beach to the 
south, and one after another the watchers by the fire 
turned their anxious eyes in the same direction. The 
sea, whipped white, was bare of any wreck. “The 
Last Hope” of Farlingford was gone. She had 
broken up or rolled into deep water. 

A number of men were coming up the shingle in 
silence. Sea Andrew, dragging his feet wearily, ap- 
proached in advance of them. 

“Boat’s thrown up on the beach,” he said to Cap- 
tain Clubbe. “Stove in by a sea. We’ve found 
them.” 

He stood back and the others, coming slowly into 
the light, deposited their burdens side by side near 
the fire. The Marquis, who had understood nothing, 
took a torch from the hand of a bystander and held it 
down toward the face of the man they had brought 
last. 

It was Loo Barebone, and the clean-cut, royal fea- 
tures seemed to wear a reflective smile. 

Miriam had come forward toward the fire, and by 
chance or by some vague instinct the bearers had laid 
their burden at her feet. After all, as John Turner 
had said, Loo Barebone had come back to her. She 
had denied him twice, and the third time he would 
take no denial. The taciturn sailors laid him there 
441 


THE LAST HOPE 


and stepped back — as if he was hers and this was the 
inevitable end of his short and stormy voyage. 

She looked down at him with tired eyes. She had 
done the right, and this was the end. There are some 
who may say that she had done what she thought was 
right, and this only seemed to be the end. It may 
be so. 

The Marquis de Gemosac was dumb for once. He 
looked round him with a half-defiant question in his 
eyes. Then he pointed a lean finger down toward 
the dead man’s face. 

“Others may question, ” he said, “but I know — I 
know” 




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